


Moritz Stiefel and Who The Fuck Stole The Lightning

by Insertpoetryhere



Series: Moritz Stiefel and the Fucking Olympians [1]
Category: Frühlings Erwachen | Spring Awakening - Frank Wedekind, Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: All ships are platonic for now, Camp Half-Blood (Percy Jackson), Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Multi, PJO AU, Temporary Character Death, They come in later, i should be ashamed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:54:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24464521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insertpoetryhere/pseuds/Insertpoetryhere
Summary: Moritz Stiefel didn't want to be a half-blood. But it's not like he had much of a choice. When his sister is taken by the god of the dead and he is accused of stealing Zeus's master bolt, he suddenly finds out just how hard it is to be the son of the sea god.
Relationships: Ernst Robel & Moritz Stiefel, Hanschen Rilow/Ernst Robel, Hanschen Rilow/Max von Trenk, Martha Bessell & Moritz Stiefel, Martha Bessell/Moritz Stiefel
Series: Moritz Stiefel and the Fucking Olympians [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1767049
Comments: 10
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

Ok first off, I didn’t want to be a half-blood. So jot that shit down.There’s absolutely nothing fun about it, and I’ve nearly died more times than I can count. It’s dangerous. It’s scary. And if I actually think that I’m going to make it past the age of twenty, I’m completely delusional.

If you’re reading this and you’re just a normal kid looking for a good book, you have no idea how lucky you are. By all means, please just go about your day thinking that this is fiction. None of this actually happened, I’m not real, and life is still a beautiful and constant thing.

But if you identify with any of this. If you think you might be a half-blood too… You might want to pay attention. Maybe take some notes, if that’s a thing you’re into. Because trust me, you’re gonna need it.

You probably want me to cut the warning and get right to the story. Which is understandable, I probably sound worse than the textbook chapter you’re avoiding right now. Just, heed my warning… It might save your life.

My name is Moritz Stiefel.

I’m twelve and a half, and up until a few months ago my life seemed to be going nowhere. Yes, even by twelve-year-old standards.

I was a student at Yancy Academy, a boarding school for troubled youth, until this incident. Am I a troubled kid? On paper, yes.

I’m a foster kid in New York who has been kicked out of five schools in six years. I have no idea who my parents are, but I’ve probably been in the care of every foster family in the Manhattan area. I have ADHD and a killer case of dyslexia, and I’ve pretty much failed every language class I’ve ever taken. I seem like a pretty textbook example of a troubled youth.

But all the times I got expelled weren’t my fault! Well, I don’t think they were at least. In first grade, they told me that I had broken the rickety old water fountain off of the wall and sent it flying at some third grader who was picking on me. But I don’t remember even touching it. I just know that one moment I was angry, and the next moment the water fountain had just kinda shot off the wall. Apparently I pushed my second grade teacher into a pond, but I remember the water itself coming up and dragging her down itself after she made a comment about my “lack of parental guidance”. I didn’t mean to send my entire class on a swim with the sharks at the aquarium in third grade, it just sort of happened. And as for this trip… 

Well, I suppose that’s the best place to start.

In my defense, when you shove thirty basket-case kids that even public school couldn’t handle into a bus and ship them to a museum full of breakable artifacts, you should know that something is going to go wrong. 

We were there to look at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new Greek and Roman exhibit, which sounded just about as interesting as slamming my head against a wall. Then again, that’s how most Yancy trips felt.

But our Latin teacher was trying his best to make it a little better.

We had gotten Mr. Brunner about halfway through the year, when our original Latin teacher (who had the unfortunate but well earned nickname of Mr. Sonnerbitch) got into some freak snowboarding accident. I always thought that was weird, since Sonnerbitch looked too old to get out of his desk chair without getting winded. I have no idea how he even managed to drag himself up any type of hill to snowboard down.

But seeing as it worked out in my favor, I wasn’t as bothered by it as I maybe should have been.

Mr. Brunner was a middle aged guy with thinning hair that looked a bit strange with the full beard he was sporting. He smelled like coffee and always wore frayed tweed suits with really ugly ties. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy that would be cool, but he somehow was. He had a suit of gladiator armor that he would bring in sometimes and we would take turns trying to figure out how to put it on. I must have really messed up trying to tie it, because when I put it on he gave me this really strange look, almost sad. The next time I got detention, he taught me how to tie it right. Not sure why, but it was kind of a cool bonding moment.

Since he was taking the reins for this trip, I thought maybe it would be alright. Or at the very least, I wouldn’t get into any trouble.

Spoiler alert, I was wrong.

I was determined to be good. My best friend Ernst was glad to help.

“What do you do if you see a really old vase?” He read off of the note cards he prepared. I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t really a self control issue, that bad things just kind of happen around me, but he made the note cards anyway and quizzed me on the bus ride there.

I sighed, leaning back in the bus seat. “Don’t touch it.”

He smiled at me right before a piece of someone’s lunch hit him on the head. He frowned, picking up a little chunk of someone’s sandwich. There was peanut butter in his hair and- was that ketchup?

I winced. That was disgusting. Who does that?

A group of boys a few seats back laughed and whispered something to one another. We could understand a certain slur clear as day. Ernst deflated a little, his shoulders hunching as if he wanted to disappear. 

Ernst was an easy target. He was the same age as me, but a little bit taller and lankier. He was soft spoken and overall gentler than most boys our age. He was cute and there were a lot of girls in our grade who liked him, but he always was uninterested. This definitely didn’t help him when it came to middle school bullies. On top of all this, he had ADHD and dyslexia like I did. Though, he definitely didn’t get into nearly as much trouble as I did. In fact, he never really got into trouble at all. He was always able to talk himself out of it. 

Ernst was good with words, which was strange because the words he used were never really anything special. It was more how he said it. He had a way of convincing me that he hadn’t done anything wrong, even if I was the one who helped him do it. Most of the time he was just covering for me, though. He doesn’t do anything bad on his own accord. No one really knows how or why he ended up at Yancy, but he started at the same time I did. No one wanted to talk to us, so we decided to talk to each other.

“They can’t call you that!” I whispered, giving the boys a dirty look. They started taunting a bit more, asking Ernst if he was gonna let his boyfriend fight his battles for him.

“It’s fine.” Ernst picked some of the sandwich out of his hair. “I like peanut butter!”

Judging from the look on his face, he wasn’t too big of a fan of the ketchup. “They really eat this?” He whispered in awe.

I laughed at that. I knew that what they said had bothered him, but I also knew why he didn’t want me to do anything about it. I was already on thin ice with the principal, and if anything slightly bad, incriminating, or fun happened I was getting a one way trip to in-school suspension.

Looking back, it would have gone better if I had just decked them. In-school suspension was about to become the least of my problems.

Mr. Brunner was leading the field trip, riding through the galleries on his motorized wheelchair. He marched us past the glass cases full of pottery and ancient statues that did not look like they should have lasted for thousands of years. He stopped every once in a while, pointing out cheerful pieces of art like violent scenes painted on vases and the grave markers of children.

To be fair, it did look like it could have been an interesting lesson. But the kids around me kept on talking. I tried to get them to stop, but Mrs. Dodds gave me the evil eye.

She was our Pre-Algebra teacher, she came just about the same time that Mr. Brunner did. She was, however, significantly less cool. And she hated me, which was fair. I hated her too. And I hated math. It was really just a bad combination in general.

She was also the only teacher that seemed to be completely immune to Ernst’s way with words (well, we had never gotten the chance to test it out with Mr. Brunner). She was absolutely terrifying, just being in the same room with her was enough for Ernst to have a breakdown.

She glared at me, making some of the boys around me laugh.

“Moritz?” Mr. Brunner asked. “Could you tell me what this mural is portraying?”

I looked at the painting, and for a moment it looked like the greek writing morphed into something familiar. The fading title spelled out Kronos, but after I blinked it was gone.

“Uh…” I tried to remember. “It’s Kronos. He’s eating his kids.”

I said it disturbingly calm, but it did help make it sound like I knew what I was talking about.

“And why is he doing that, exactly?” Mr. Brunner edged on.

I thought a little more. “Uh… because he didn’t want them to take over?”

Mr. Brunner looked pleased, and I’m sure I did too. It’s not often that I get questions right. He continued to tell the story, and I allowed my brain to turn off. I’d done my learning for the day, it was time to stare at the same spot on the wall until we had to keep moving.

After that, we went out for lunch. Ernst and I sat at the fountain, eating the sack lunches that the school gave us.

“Greek mythology is weird.” I said offhandedly, opening up a little plastic bag of carrots.

Ernst just kind of laughed awkwardly, taking a long sip from his juice box. This was weird, but then again Ernst was always kind of strange. Things like this were nothing compared to some of the other stuff he did.

Mrs. Dodds looked over at us, like she was just waiting for one of us to mess up. I gave her a friendly smile and waved, no way was I going to give her the satisfaction.

The group of boys from the bus were sitting nearby, looking over to us like they had only just realized that we were sitting there. Ernst tried to ignore them, obviously diverting his attention to his untied shoelace.

I glared at them. It wasn’t a good idea looking back, but I was pissed and not in the right mindset. The oldest boy, a tall and stocky guy who had been held back a few grades, stood up and walked over to us.

I went to stand up, but they walked right past me and stood right in front of Ernst. I already knew where this was going.

“C’mon, Ernst.” I said, grabbing my lunch and standing up. Ernst got up too, but one of the bigger boys blocked him.

“Oh come on, we just want to talk.” Two of them grabbed Ernst by the shoulder.

I pushed them back, hoping that they would just get the message and leave us alone. I’ve never been known as the smartest kid, and I’m starting to wonder if moments like this one are the reason why people think I am an idiot.

The boy I pushed turned to me, grinning wickedly and letting Ernst go. The boy on the other side did the same. Remember when I said I should have just punched these guys on the bus? I was lying. I may have been taller than them, but they had me beat in every other category. 

The biggest one stepped forward, and I knew for a fact that he was going to hit me. My arms went up over my face in a somewhat pathetic attempt to block a punch, but it never came. 

When I put my arms down, wondering what was taking so long, I saw them laying in the fountain. All four of them were looking at me like I had just grown an extra head. Judging by how wet the ground around me was, I definitely should have been in the splash zone. But I was completely dry.

Mrs. Dodds was over in the blink of an eye, clicking her tongue in disappointment. “Now, honey…” She said in a sickly sweet voice. She put her hand on my arm, but it was hot. Almost burning. I pulled back quickly, which seemed to disappoint her.

She didn’t say anything, but began to lead me away from the group. Ernst started stuttering, trying to convince her that he had been the one who pushed them into the fountain.

She smiled at him, and just kept brushing him off while she dragged me a bit faster. “No, I don’t believe it was.”

“It’s fine, Ernst.” I said gently as he started jogging to keep up. I couldn’t figure out why he was so stressed out about this, the worst that I would get is detention. “I’ll see you after lunch.”

Ernst looked from me to Mrs. Dodds and frowned. I was being dragged away again, and I saw him making a weird gesture. Almost like a cross, but it looked… older? 

I didn’t have time to think about it for too long before Mrs. Dodds had dragged me into an empty gallery. We stood in front of the marble statues of the gods, and she was making this noise that almost sounded like a growl.

“So am I gonna have detention?” I asked after about a minute of silence. “Or do you want me to buy them new shirts from the gift shop? Like, what exactly am I doing here?”

“I’ve heard many things about you, Moritz Stiefel.” Mrs. Dodds said, and her voice echoed in the empty gallery.

“Oh.” I said. “That’s nice…” Very cryptic. “I’m glad?” Why am I here?

“You have given us quite a bit of trouble, sweetie.” She smiled.

“So I am getting detention?” I really just wanted this sentencing to end. I had left my sandwich alone, and if I didn’t hurry then a pigeon might eat it.

Mrs. Dodds laughed, but not like a fun laugh. More like a “I’m gonna end this man’s whole career” kind of laugh. Not a laugh you want to be on the receiving end of.

“I think we might be past detention, honey.” Mrs. Dodds spat out.

My eyes widened. “Suspension?!”

Her cackling continued, which I did not like. But I think the part that I disliked the most was the fact that she was growing. That is never a good sign.

She had suddenly sprouted wings, and her feet were now claws with thick, sharp talons at the end of them. She was still laughing as she hovered about twelve feet in the air. I stumbled backwards, falling directly on my back as I watched her complete her transformation. There was no way that this was real. I had to be on something. Someone had to have slipped something into my Uncrustable.

She finished her laughing, and was now looking at me with her beady red eyes. I blinked really hard once, and when that didn’t work I pinched myself. She was still there, her wings flapping and carrying her up higher. At first I thought she was just going to fly out of the window and leave, but then it dawned on me. She was going to attack.

“Moritz!” I heard someone call my name. I turned just in time to see Mr. Brunner throw me something small. I tried to catch it, but my flailing just made me drop it. I watched as a blue ballpoint pen rolled away from me, wondering what the actual hell I was supposed to do with it. If this weird hallucination had anything to do with my mental state, then I needed professional help.

I tried to roll out of the way and grab it, but I didn’t move fast enough. One of Mrs. Dodds’ talons caught my upper arm at an angle that wasn’t doing much good for either of us. I heard Mrs. Dodds let out a screech, and my other hand instinctively grabbed onto my arm. I felt blood seeping in through my jacket and the broken end of her talon poking out. Ok, maybe this wasn’t a hallucination.

Mrs. Dodds flew back up, now a bit more wobbly as she inspected her own injury. I scrambled to grab the pen, looking back over to Mr. Brunner to see if he had any insight in what I was supposed to do with it.

Ernst was now standing beside him, and started making a hand motion. I think he was trying to tell me what to do without getting Mrs. Dodds attention, but he wasn’t doing a good job. He made two fists and pressed them side by side, then pulled them apart. I looked down at the pen.

“Break it?” I mouthed, repeating the thing he did. He looked confused. Apparently neither of us were good at this.

I tried breaking the pen, but it was much stronger than it looked. I tried again, this time with all my strength. Still no luck.

Mrs. Dodds smiled at me, very on brand for her seeing as she loved seeing kids struggle helplessly. She was a math teacher, after all. I saw her, and I knew she was about to come down again.

I didn’t have time. I threw the pen to the side and ripped the talon out of my arm. It should have hurt, but I had way too much adrenaline coursing through me to even notice if it did. Mrs. Dodds was coming towards me at full speed, and I had just enough time to turn my head, squeeze my eyes shut, accept my own mortality, and hold the talon up towards her in a pathetic attempt at self preservation.

I waited for her to claw my eyes out, stab me in the chest, etc. You know, kill me. Like any respectable pre-algebra teacher. But it never happened.

Instead, I felt the feeling of dust gently falling on me. Gold dust, to be specific. As if Mrs. Dodds had disappeared into a cloud of yellow glitter.   
The talon was still in my hand, but now I could feel the dull pain in my upper arm and the sharper pain of another deep scratch in my forearm.

The pen was in my pocket, even though I was sure that I hadn’t put it there. There was also Dodds-dust in my mouth, which I spit out immediately onto the tile floor.

After that I stood up, brushed the gold dust off of my clothes, put the talon in my pocket, and went back outside. My arm hurt more with every step, but I wasn’t quite mentally ready to acknowledge that yet.

When I stepped back out into the little courtyard, everything seemed pretty normal. No one had noticed me yet, but there was a younger woman helping them out of the fountain. Ernst was talking animatedly with Mr. Brunner before he noticed me. I must have looked quite rough, because he turned sheet-white and his green eyes went wide with just about every negative emotion you can think of.

I walked up to Mr. Brunner, who was reading a book. It must have been a really good book, because he didn’t even look up when I walked over to him with his pen.

“Ah,” He said, taking the pen back with his eyes still reading. “Thank you, Moritz.”

Ernst was still speechless, which was rare. It wasn’t often that Ernst ran out of ways to tell me how stupid something I did was. I stood there awkwardly as Mr. Brunner continued to read. It took about thirty seconds for me to say something.

“Sir, I mean this with all due respect… but what the fuck just happened?” I asked. Normally I tried not to swear in front of teachers, but this felt like an appropriate time to drop an F-bomb.

“Moritz! I hardly think that’s-” Mr. Brunner stopped reading, and seemed to notice the various gashes in my arm. “Oh my- Mrs. Dodds! Call an ambulance!”

I didn’t know why the young lady by the fountain responded, but I was a bit too woozy from blood loss to care that much. I looked over to Ernst, who was still silent. He was green. Like, comically green. Like the kind of green that a cartoon character would turn before they threw up. Was it just me, or was this kind of funny.

Judging by the look on the young woman’s face when she came over, it was definitely just me. And Ernst did in fact throw up just a few seconds later.

I was going to tell them I was fine, but then I passed out. So I guess I wasn’t.

I woke up in the hospital with my arm in a sling. Ernst, Mr. Brunner, and the young woman that was claiming to be Mrs. Dodds were in the waiting room. They wanted me to tell them what happened. I told them I was attacked.

“By whom?” Mr. Brunner asked.

“Mrs. Dodds.” I said. The young woman’s face paled. She began to insist her innocence, which still confused me.

“N-no.” I explained sternly. “I mean the real Mrs. Dodds. You were there, you saw it!”

Mr. Brunner looked confused, as if he didn’t even know where to begin unpacking what I just said. “Moritz, Mrs. Dodds was with me the whole time.”

It technically wasn’t a lie. I gave up, making up some story about how I fell. It made no sense, but it was the best thing they were going to get. Mrs. “Dodds” didn’t buy it at first, but then Ernst did a retelling of it that sounded so convincing that I almost believed it was what happened.

I was discharged the next day, and when I returned to school the principal informed me that I was not going to be invited back to Yancy next fall.

So there you go. I vaporized my pre-algebra teacher and got expelled from my sixth school in six years. And this right here is why I stand by the fact that nobody wants to be a half-blood.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here comes my girllllll

The bus ride back to Manhattan had to be one of the most awkward situations I have ever been in. I sat next to Ernst, but also on the opposite end of the seat. I made sure that there was a lot of passive-aggressive coded physical space between us.

“You were there,” I insisted. “You saw it.”

“No I didn’t.” Ernst had his arms crossed and was looking out the window. This was fighting. We were fighting now, I guess.

“And the pen-” I made some obscure hand gesture. “The pen!”

“Why would I give you a pen if you were fighting a demon version of our math teacher?” he asked. 

“You didn’t give it to me,” I corrected him. “Mr. Brunner gave it to me. You told me to break it and it didn’t work.”

“Maybe I wasn’t telling you to break it.” Ernst slumped in his seat. “Maybe I was telling you to uncap it, but you’re too dense to get it.”

“That was oddly specific for someone who says he wasn’t there.” I wanted to cross my arms too, but my arm sling was in the way. Also, crossing my arms kind of hurt. I decided to rest my chin on my palm instead. It didn’t really hit the same, but it worked.

“I’m done talking about this,” Ernst said. “This is dumb.”

“You’re dumb.” 

“You’re dumber.”

“Yeah? Well-”

“Shut up!” A kid from a few rows ahead shouted. Ernst and I did, but only because we wanted to.

The bus pulled into the Manhattan terminal about an hour later, and Ernst and I were still on a strictly no-speaking basis. The other kids were getting their luggage out of the bus, but I had managed to shove everything into a backpack and bring it on the bus with me. What could I say, Yancy was a school full of kleptomaniacs and assholes. I didn’t want there to be a chance that my bag mysteriously disappeared.

I took a few steps away from the crowd, and Ernst tried to follow without making it obvious. Subtlety was never his strong point.

I didn’t want to look at him, so I started scanning the crowd around me. Lots of people were either returning home from their schools or were tourists arriving with their fanny packs and oversized cameras. 

Three old ladies sitting on a bench caught my eye. They were all almost identical, with the same brown skin and frizzy grey hair that looked almost white. They each had a pair of dark sunglasses and a white cotton dress. But it was what they were doing that had me staring. One was unrolling a huge ball of yarn while the one next to her knitted the biggest pair of socks I had ever seen. 

The woman at the very end looked back at me and smiled. I watched as she took a pair of scissors and brought it up to the yarn she was holding ever so delicately. She cut the yarn, and I could hear the snap of the scissors from where I stood in the busy bus terminal. The sound seemed to echo and then slowly fade out.

Ernst must have heard too, since when I looked over to him he was paler than usual. His eyes looked blue in this lightning, which I thought was weird. Usually they were green.

“Let me walk you home.” He broke our vow of silence. “Please.”

He wasn’t asking, but more telling me. I don’t know why, but for a moment I was actually considering it. I nodded, even though in my head I was saying “Hell no”.

He nodded back. “I need to go get my bag. Wait for me, okay?”

He was telling me again. And I really don’t take well to directions. After he shoved his way far enough into the crowd, I smiled and waved goodbye to the old ladies on the bench and left.

I grabbed the first taxi that was parked by the curb. The driver looked a bit annoyed to see me there, as he was probably hoping to get a tourist family looking to take a ride to the farthest possible four-star hotel. He knew I was a native the moment that I told him his pricing was bullshit and made him tell me his actual rate.

I didn’t feel bad for leaving Ernst behind. I had no idea what was up with him, but he was acting super weird. I did hope that he wasn’t too worried when he didn’t find me when he got back. I had given him my phone number, so I was sure that i would be hearing about it when he called later to tell me how stupid that was. Granted, it was kind of stupid.

I finally arrived at my foster father’s apartment late in the afternoon. I ended up blowing my last few dollars at an arcade downtown and then walking home. My bag now had a few hundred tickets shoved in it. I had been hoarding tickets from this place since I was nine, though I had no intention of doing anything with them. Still, it brought me a little bit of pride having all of the tickets I had earned stuffed in a jar on my bookshelf. Never know when you might need them.

When I opened the door, I realized that I was the only one home. Which was absolutely fine by me. Knowing my foster father, he was either on some business trip that he had neglected to mention or he was staying late at work and thinking up some insanely disproportionate punishment for my expulsion. Maybe he would ground me from my arm sling privileges. 

I went into my room, which was a bit more like a closet with a bed and a dresser shoved into it. My bed was made army-style, meaning that Harold had been in there recently and wasn’t quite satisfied with how I chose to arrange my own sheets.

Harold was my foster father, who had banned Greta and I from calling him dad right off the bat. That was fine with me. Harold fit him much better anyway. Plus it made him really mad, which is what I lived for.

Though, judging by the fact that I saw my report card lying open on the kitchen table, I might want to just give in and call him “sir” for the next few days.

I heard the door open, and I winced. I guess my few moments of peace had come to a screeching halt. I stood still with my eyes closed, awaiting any further instructions.

“Moritz?” It wasn’t Harold’s voice, and it made me smile ear to ear. It was Greta.

I dropped my bag on the bed and ran into the living room to give her a hug. Greta was my foster sister, who I met in a home when I was six. We had this immediate connection, and before you knew it we were informing our shared social worker that we weren’t going anywhere alone anymore. We had been a package deal for half of my life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I don’t know why Greta liked me. She had been six years older than me, and frankly I wasn’t even that nice to her at first. I didn’t like that she was trying to take care of me, since I only knew how to take care of myself. But she had this patience that I had never seen in anyone else before, and somehow we learned to take care of eachother.

I almost knocked her down as I ran to hug her, but she managed to regain her balance. She laughed and hugged back, almost lifting me right off the ground.

“You have no idea how much I missed you!” she said, squeezing tighter. She crushed my injured arm, and I winced. Greta immediately pulled back and narrowed her eyes at the sling. 

“What happened?” she asked, gently lifting my arm out of the sling so she could inspect the damage. I flinched and pulled it away from her.

“I uh… I got into a fight.” It was technically the truth. I did get into a fight. Just instead of with another kid, it was with a demon math teacher.

Greta frowned, but she didn’t say anything else about it. Instead she pulled out a white paper bag and shook it a few times. “Guess what I have?”

I smiled. “Blue candy?”

“I picked it up on my way back from work.” She opened the paper bag and handed me a handful of blue jelly beans. “So, how was school?”

I filled her in on some of the year’s highlights, hyping them up to sound way better than they were. I passed Latin (with a D-), I met a lot of kids (most of them wanted to kick my ass), and I even made a friend (who I had ditched at a bus terminal). 

Greta knew I wasn’t telling her the full truth. It’s hard to bullshit a master bullshitter. “Tough year, huh?”

I hesitated before nodding. “Yeah… tough year.”

“Well, think about it,” She said. “I turn 18 in a few weeks, and when I do we can get out of here. Move upstate, maybe find a nice public school up there? You can actually live at home this year.”

“And what will you do?” I asked bitterly. “Quit work to try and keep up with all of the visits to the principal?”

Greta just laughed. “No, I was thinking more along the lines of online college. Getting a degree in writing and writing a few books. Obviously, I’m going to need my favorite creative consultant for that one.”

She nudged me, and then I realized what we were doing. Playing pretend. “Hm, alright, I can see that. Maybe we can try homeschooling instead?”

“Alright, homeschooling sounds good,” Greta agreed. “If we’re both home all day, then we should definitely get a dog.”

“A big dog,” I said. “Like a St. Bernard. A very fluffy one.”

“We can live in the woods, right next to a lake. And with a huge garden,” Greta laughed. “That way you and the dog can run around a lot.”

“And we stay there all year-” I added.

“Except for one week every summer when we go to Disney World!” Greta’s eyes lit up.

“And it’s just the two of us?” I asked.

Greta smiled. She reached over and ruffled my hair. “Just the two of us. I promise.”

I frowned. Suddenly I wished that this was all real. I leaned my head on Greta’s shoulder, who took the hint and pulled me in for another hug. 

We sat like that for a few minutes before she said anything. “Hey, you wanna go somewhere for the weekend?”

“Really?” I asked. “What about ‘Sir’?”

“He’s out of town until Tuesday.” Greta said. “We’ve got an entire Sir-free weekend. So where do you want to spend it?”

I didn’t have to think for too long. “The beach!”

“Then go pack up some clothes and a swimsuit!” She gently pushed me towards my bedroom. “I’ll go grab some stuff and load up the car.”

“But-” I started to object, knowing our foster father always had a way of finding out when we broke the rules and he was never particularly level headed about it.

“What Harold doesn’t know can’t hurt him,” Greta assured me. “Go pack, I’ll go get the car.”

I ran into my bedroom and opened up my backpack. I grabbed the arcade tickets and shoved them into my ticket jar, just because I didn’t want them to accidentally get wet. I kicked my shorts off and grabbed my old swim trunks from the top drawer. They used to be neon green, but now they had faded into this pastel color. I liked the new color better, but I wasn’t a fan of how the elastic band had broken and didn’t fit around my waist right anymore. I had taken a long shoelace and threaded it through the waist band, which worked fine as long as I made sure to adjust it every ten minutes.

I pulled the swim shorts on and tied the shoelace tight before zipping my bag back up and running into the living room. Greta was already there, with a drawstring backpack and the key to our foster father’s car. 

“Nice of him to leave the keys this time,” I commented.

Greta laughed. “Well, I don’t think he meant to. But from what I understand they just sort of… ‘slipped out’ of his bag when he was getting in the company car.”

I smiled. I was pretty glad that Greta wasn’t above petty crime, or else we would probably never get the chance to have any fun.

The drive to the beach was almost two hours, but it went by pretty fast with the music blaring and us singing at the top of our lungs. Well… maybe calling it singing is a bit generous. It was more like dignified screaming.

Technically, Greta wasn’t legally allowed to drive without a supervisor over the age of 21. She was a bit late getting her drivers licence, so she still only had her learners permit. But when you think about it, if you switch the numbers in 12 around, you get 21. So I’m a qualified teacher.

“You should go faster,” I said, seeing the beach in the distance.

“Moritz, I’m already going ten over the speed limit,” Greta said with a laugh.

“Faster,” I repeated. “I’m impatient and I wanna swim.”

I am a good driving instructor.

When we got to the beach, Greta went to get a room at a nearby cheap motel and I flung myself directly into the ocean. Greta joined me after a few minutes, refusing to go in too deep but agreeing to standing in the knee-deep water and pushing me directly into oncoming waves.

I technically wasn’t supposed to swim with my sling on, but I had a bad habit of not really listening to anything that professionals tell me about my own health (can we get an F in the chat for my therapist?). But my arm actually felt better after I got in the water. By the time the sun was setting, it wasn’t bothering me at all.

Greta was sitting on a motel towel that we had stolen from the bathroom, watching the sunset when I ran up to her. “We should check your arm,” she said.

I looked down at my sling, expecting it to be soaking wet. But somehow, it had stayed completely dry. “Weird…” I muttered.

Greta seemed to notice, but she didn’t say anything. She took my arm out of the sling carefully and unwrapped it. I looked away, choosing to stare at the waves rather than at the gross, shredded skin of my arm.

“When did you say you got this?” Greta asked.

“Like a week ago,” I said. “Why, is something wrong with it?”

“It’s gone,” she whispered.

At first I thought I hadn’t heard her right. There was no way it was just gone. Sure the school nurse had been impressed with how well it was healing, but it was still very much there before I got on the bus at Yancy. I turned my head to look at it, but all that was there was a faint scar, brown and barely noticeable. Greta unwrapped the other bandage, but that cut was gone too.

“I guess it wasn’t as deep as they thought?” I tried to explain it, but it still didn’t make any sense. It had been there that morning, why wasn’t it there now.

Greta nodded. “Yeah, that must be it.”

She looked sad, but I didn’t know why. She tried to hide it by pulling out a bag of blue gummy bears, which worked a bit better than it should have. We had already finished the paper bag of candy, so we were clearly in dire need of more sugar.

I guess I should explain all the blue food. A few summers ago, when we were in a foster home with this health-crazy suburban white mom (her name was Karen. I wish I was joking), She and my sister got into an argument about whether or not blue food existed. It hadn’t started off as an argument, but this woman didn’t really like either of us and had a habit of turning anything we said into a full blown fight whenever she could. And me, being the passive aggressive bastard I am, immediately went out and bought pretty much everything blue and unhealthy that I could get at a gas station for the $15 in my pocket. A blue raspberry slushie, blue tortilla chips, a variety of blue candies, and blue twinkies. Karen realized that she had lost the war when she finally noticed eight-year-old me sitting on top of her granite counters surrounded by exclusively blue junk food. Greta had laughed, and we were in a different home in a matter of only a few days. Ever since then, blue food had kind of been our thing.

We sat and talked on the beach for a little while before going back to the motel. We ordered a pizza for dinner, and that’s when I noticed how much we were spending.

“How exactly are we paying for this?” I asked after she hung up with the local pizza hut.

Greta smiled, pulling a wad of cash out of her bag. “Harold accidentally left this in his sock drawer. I figured he wouldn’t notice if about a hundred or so just happened to disappear.”

I wasn’t too sure about that. I knew from experience how much he might mind, and how much it might hurt. Greta probably knew that too, but she didn’t get to defy him often. I couldn’t say that I had never purposefully made him mad just to try and show him that he couldn’t control me… though I usually regretted it.

Greta must have seen it on my face, and she smiled softly. “Don’t worry. There was literally thousands of dollars in there, he isn’t going to even notice this is gone.”

Our pizza got there in a half hour, and Greta and I decided to watch some shitty hallmark movie on the old TV. It was something about a teenage pregnancy pact? I fell asleep about half way through, a slice of pizza still in my hand.

There was a sharp knock on our door, waking us both up. It was pouring rain outside, and I was shocked that the thunder hadn’t woken us up first. 

I heard Greta get up, and I was about to drift back to sleep until I heard someone say my name.

“Moritz isn’t safe here anymore, we’ve got to get him to-”

“No, he isn’t ready yet!” Greta insisted. “He doesn’t even know what he is yet, he needs more time!”

“We don’t have more time!” The voice of the person at the door sounded familiar, but I wasn’t quite awake enough to figure out how I knew it. “The summer solstice is in two weeks, and-”

There was something that almost sounded like thunder, if it wasn’t for the animalistic roar that came after it. It was the kind of noise that could just about snap you out of a trance.

I jolted up so fast that I fell off the edge of the bed. I landed with an undignified thud.

“Great,” the voice sighed. “If he would have just waited for me at the bus terminal like I told him to-”

Wait. I knew that disappointed voice! I peeked over the edge of the bed and saw Ernst, standing in the doorway. He was soaked, and his arms were crossed. He didn’t seem too happy to see me peeking over the motel duvet.

“Do you have any idea how long it took for me to find you?” he asked. “Do you even comprehend how worried I was when-”

Another roar broke through the air, and Ernst went silent again.

Greta turned to me, the color drained from her face. “Go get your bag, we have to go!”

She rushed to shove the clothes on the floor from both of us into her bag, throwing the car keys to Ernst and telling him to go get the car started. Ernst looked like he wasn’t quite sure how to do that, but he said he would try.

“Where are we going?” I asked, following her into the rain.

Greta didn’t turn around. Instead, she grabbed my hand and dragged me to the car even faster. There was another roar, this time louder. And closer.

“We’re going to camp.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THEY ARE HERE

We were speeding down the highway at 90 miles per hour, a speed that I didn’t even know that car could get to. I was sitting next to Ernst, who was just about the most unhelpful person to be seated next to when you had no idea what was going on.

“Where are we going?” I asked, though I would have been better off talking to a wall. “What’s this ‘camp’?”

“We don’t have time to explain!” Ernst said quickly, sitting on his knees and looking out of the back window intently.

“Bullshit!” I snapped. “We’re literally in a car, driving in the middle of nowhere! This would be the ideal time for you to explain something!”

“It’s a lot to explain, Moritz.” Greta explained calmly, like she wasn’t going 20 miles over the speed limit and driving us away from only god knows what. “It’s better if we just wait until we get to camp.”

“What camp?” I demanded again, but I didn’t get a response.

Ernst took a deep breath, sitting back in his seat and buckling his seatbelt. “I think we lost it.”

Just as he finished his sentence, we heard a siren and saw the flashing red and blue lights in the rearview mirror. 

Greta groaned, slowing down and pulling over to the side of the road. “Shit!” She muttered under her breath. 

An officer came up to the window, motioning for her to roll the window down. “Licence and registration, please.”

Greta did not look as scared as she should have. She was an unlicensed, uninsured driver going twenty miles over the speed limit with two kids in the back seat. Instead of getting her permit, she turned around and looked over her shoulder at Ernst. “We don’t have time for this. Do you mind-?”

“I’m on it.” Ernst went to unbuckle his seatbelt, and I saw this look in his eye. I immediately knew what he was doing.

I grabbed his arm, holding him back. “Ernst, are you on crack? This isn’t a teacher, this is a cop! You can’t talk your way out of this one.”

“You wanna bet?” Ernst yanked his arm away and poked his head through the gap between the two front seats. Greta leaned back, closed her eyes, and plugged her ears.

“Excuse me, sir?” Ernst spoke, and suddenly I was listening. “There isn’t a problem, is there?”

Out of nowhere I actually started to wonder if there was a problem. Had we done anything wrong?

The officer didn’t answer, so Ernst just kept going. “Because I don’t think we’ve done anything wrong.”

He was right, we hadn't broken any rules. This was all just a misunderstanding. I felt this sudden rush of relief, and I visibly relaxed as Ernst kept talking.

The officer blinked before he spoke. “I uh… no, I don’t think you have.”

“Well, that’s a relief!” Ernst said. And it was. This was the most calm I had felt in… well, ever. “So would it be alright if we left now? We’re in a bit of a hurry. You can just tear up that ticket, I don’t think you’re going to need it anymore.”

The cop nodded, dazed as he ripped up the ticket in his hand and let it fall to the ground in pieces. “Yes… Uh, yes that’s fine. Have a good night.”

Ernst waved goodbye, and Greta wasted no time speeding off. I sat in a daze for a minute before coming back to reality. My head cleared up and all of the muscles in my body tensed up. I looked at Ernst, horrified.

“What was that?” I asked. Ernst looked pale, so I dug a handful of gummy bears out of my backpack and gave them to him. When that didn’t show any improvement, I threw him a juice box. 

“Charmspeak.” He said simply, as if I was supposed to know what that meant. There was another earth-shaking roar. “How close are we?”

Greta looked at us through the rearview mirror and opened her mouth to speak, but never got to. Instead, something hit the top of our car at top speed, sending us rolling off the road and into the field next to the highway.

There was a dull, throbbing pain in the back of my head, and my vision was cloudy for a few seconds. But at least I wasn’t dead.

“Is everyone alright?” Greta asked. Ernst and I just groaned in response. Whether or not we were alright was up for debate, but for the time being we were in fact alive.

Another roar broke through the air, and we all fumbled with our seatbelts. Greta broke her window with her elbow and crawled out, pulling Ernst and I out next. She dragged us away from the clearing and into the forest along the road.

“We’re almost there, just keep running!” She said to us, dragging us both behind her.

I looked back over my shoulder at the totaled car behind us and saw someone standing by it. It was just a silhouette, but I will still qualify it as one of the top ten scariest things I had ever seen in my life. It was a man, but he was at least nine feet tall and built like a pro wrestler on steroids. He had something that looked a little like a limp, and it seemed like he was sniffing the air for something. He came up to the car and flipped it over like it was nothing, looking inside before roaring once again. He raised his fist just above the roof, and I looked away just in time to hear the crunching of metal and glass. I decided that I really didn’t want to see that.

“We just have to get to the border, then-” Greta didn’t get to finish her sentence. There was a sudden flash of white light that landed just between our feet and sent all three of us flying back. It took me a little bit too long to realize what it was. Lightning.

“Moritz!” Ernst was now kneeling over me, shaking a now badly injured shoulder. I winced, wondering how many times that one side of my body was going to get hurt before all of this was over.

Greta sat up straight, and we all watched as the tall figure from the car came into full view. It wasn’t a man, At least, it wasn’t fully a man. It’s body was covered in coarse brown fur, and it had the head and hooves of a bull. Two long horns jutted out from the side of it’s head, and it huffed as it looked between the three of us. 

“The minotaur…” Ernst whispered in awe. Slowly, he rose to his feet.

“Ernst!” Greta hissed, trying not to let the monster hear her. “Don’t you dare!”

Ernst wasn’t listening. Instead, he took something out of his pocket. It looked like one of those compact mirrors, but when he opened it, it turned into a shield. Not one of those toy ones from the dollar store either, like a full length gladiator shield that was far too big for Ernst to carry. He looked terrified.

Greta’s eyes widened. “Ernst, you can’t take it alone!” She pleaded. “Grab Moritz and get across the border! I can handle this!”

“I can’t!” Ernst’s voice was shaking as the Minotaur’s eyes fell on him. He was definitely hard to miss with the five foot tall, glowing gold shield in his hand. The monster looked uninterested at first, but then it saw me laying just a bit behind him. 

It huffed, and with one swing of its arm it batted Ernst away like a fly. Ernst tried to use his shield to block it, but the shield was too heavy and the monster was too strong. He fell to the ground, hitting the back of his head against something with a loud crack. The minotaur didn’t seem interested in him anymore.

Instead he was looking right at me, huffing quite intensely. I tried to get up and move Ernst somewhere safe, but the pain in my singed arm and leg was too much. I fell back to the ground, and the minotaur roared loudly once again.

“Hey!” Greta called out, now carrying Ernst’s shield and hitting it with something. I squinted and saw that it was a golden sickle, like the ones that they used to use for farming but was fancier.

The minotaur cringed at the noise and turned towards her. She looked it in the eye and raised the shield, but the monster tossed it aside just as easily as he had before. He grabbed Greta by the neck and lifted her up. Her golden sickle fell out of her hand and landed in the dirt under her.

She turned to me. “Go!” She shouted. The minotaur squeezed her neck harder, and I watched as she tried to pretend that it didn’t hurt.

I looked from Greta, to the minotaur, to the sickle, and then back to Greta again. Adrenaline rushed through me, and suddenly I got a really stupid idea. I have no idea how I managed, but I ran past the minotaur’s hooves and scooped the sickle up.

I held it awkwardly, not fully sure what to do with it. The minotaur huffed angrily, turning to face me again. I wanted to say something snarky, but all I could manage was a scared sob. My vision was blurry, but it couldn’t tell if that was because I was in pain or if I was starting to cry.

It charged at me, and the only thing I could think to do was run towards it as well. The monster went to reach for me, but Greta had managed to kick it in the jaw. The minotaur roared in pain, and for a second it was distracted again. 

I should have ran. But the things I should have done and the things I actually did are always very different. All I could see was the sickle in my hand and the hairy skin that was unguarded as the monster held its aching jaw. I took the handle of the sickle, holding it like a baseball bat and swung the sharp tip right into the spot under its ribs.

I closed my eyes, waiting for the monster to realize what I had done and trample me to death with its hooves. But that surprisingly didn’t happen.

Instead, there was a bright shower of light that I could see through my eyelids. Both the creature and Greta screamed in pain as the light got brighter and brighter.

Then everything stopped. When I opened my eyes, it was all silent and dark again. Both Greta and the minotaur were gone, leaving me standing in the middle of the woods almost completely alone.

Ernst groaned, and I turned around. He was trying to pull himself up using a tree trunk as leverage. I rushed to his side, the adrenaline still numbing the searing pain in my arm as I slumped him against my torso. 

The moment his head brushed my shoulder, the pain came back tenfold and almost knocked me right back on my knees. The only thing that kept me upright was the stubborn refusal to die right then and there. I started dragging Ernst, not quite sure where I was going but knowing that just about anywhere was better than where we were.

We kept walking until we saw a farmhouse in the distance. All of the lights were on, except for the ones on the top floor. The pain in my arm was unbearable, and I knew that I wouldn’t last much longer in the state I was in.

“Help!” I screamed out pathetically. “Someone help!”

There was movement, and then there were three vague outlines of people standing on the porch. They yelled something back into the house and ran towards us. I couldn’t tell what they looked like, how old they were, or even if they were even really human. Two of them took Ernst off of my shoulder and the other let me lean on them while we walked towards the house. 

This one was a girl, and she smelled like pomegranates and grass. It was actually a really nice combination of smells, and I think I would have liked it a lot better if I hadn’t been on the verge of collapsing. She was telling me something, but I was a bit too far gone at that point to really know what she was saying. Her voice was calming, which scared me. It sounded like I was a wild animal injured in the woods that was being calmed down by a hiker while the other got ready to put me out of my misery.

We made it to the porch just as another figure came out to see what was going on. This one was taller, almost impossibly tall, and whatever kind of shoes they were wearing made a weird clopping noise whenever they hit the floor.

I suddenly wanted nothing more than to fight back, grab Ernst, and run in any direction that would get us away from whoever these people were…

But that’s when my vision when black and the rest of the world around me faded into nothing.

By the time I woke up, there was daylight coming in through the window of the farmhouse I had so gracefully collapsed in front of. There was a straw in my mouth, and a vague kind of pleasant taste coming in through it. It tasted like a mix of chocolate and that really artificial tasting cherry flavor that I loved for no clear reason.

When my vision cleared up some more, I saw the girl sitting on the bed next to me. She had cool, dark brown skin that stuck out against the warm tones of the room around us. Her hair was black. Not the dark brown that most people would call black, but like actual black. It was so dark that it almost looked fake. She had it parted down the middle and done in two smooth braids that fell just a bit past her shoulders. She sat so still that she almost looked like a statue.

Her eyes were terrifying, almost making her look inhuman. They were dark… something? They weren’t really a color. It looked more like her pupils had expanded and consumed her irises. My mouth went dry and my face flushed. She was pretty, but in the scariest way possible.

She drew her dark eyebrows close together and gently pulled the straw out of my mouth. She looked at me intently, and I wondered what she was going to say.

“You drool in your sleep.” She deadpanned.

I blinked, and the realization hit me like a truck. A reinforced one. Full of bricks. This girl was my age, and judging by her skinny build and the way her bright orange t-shirt hung on her small shoulders I didn’t think she was going to be much of a threat. “Uh… Thanks?”

The door opened, and a boy about a year older than me came in. He had tanned skin and warm brown hair that curled around his ears. He looked like what those little cherubs in old paintings would look like if they were ten years older. He was wearing the same eye-burning orange t-shirt as the girl, but his looked like it fit him just a little bit better. 

He saw me sitting up and smiled, showing off the dimples on his cheeks. I flushed even brighter, so much that I could actually feel the heat radiating off of my face. 

“Oh good, you’re up!” He stood up straight and rubbed his hands together, as if me being there was the best thing that had happened all week. “For a second we thought you might have… Well, that doesn’t matter. How are you feeling?”

“Uh… Better. Well, better than I was.” I explained very intelligently. “Not hard to do since I was, you know… Bleeding.”

The boy took a step into the room and frowned, inspecting my face. “Martha, how much nectar did you give him?”

The girl on the bed looked down at the red plastic cup in her hand. “Not that much, why?”

“Hm… He just seems a little overheated. Maybe we should lay off for a bit.” The boy took the cup from her and put it on the bedside table.

Overheated? I looked over at the cup cautiously, wondering what exactly they had just given me.

“Uh… Where am I?” I asked. The two gave each other a weird look, then looked back at me. 

The boy laughed. “Uh, how about we start off with an easier question.” He stuck his hand out. “I’m Melchior Gabor. What’s your name?”

I didn’t shake his hand. Instead I looked him right in his light grey eyes. “Asking where I am doesn’t sound like it should be a very difficult question to answer.”

“Yeah, I guess it shouldn’t be. But trust me, I’m not the person you want to answer that.” He just kept giving me his lopsided smile and stuck his hand out a little further. 

Despite my gut instinct and all common sense, I shook it. “I’m Moritz.”

Melchior looked pleased. “Let’s get you downstairs. I’m sure Chiron will want to talk with you.”

“Where’s Ernst?” I asked, suddenly realizing that he wasn’t in the room with me. Panic started to set in when I looked around and still didn’t see him.

Martha stood up off of the bed, clearly not sure what to do. “He’s fine.” She said quickly. “He wasn’t hurt too badly.”

My breathing came a little easier after hearing that. “And what about my sister?”

The other two kids froze, giving each other another weird look. “Uh, Martha? How about you go downstairs and tell Chiron that our friend is awake? I can help him up.”

Martha did not need to be told twice. She gave me an awkward nod that I think was supposed to stand in for a goodbye and left rather quickly. Now it was just me and Melchior.

“Where is she?” I asked again, but I still didn’t get an answer. Melchior bit his lip.

“Let’s just go see Chiron.”

On the way down the stairs, I noticed that my arm didn’t hurt anymore. I panicked, and immediately rolled up the sleeve of the oversized white T-shirt I was wearing.

There was absolutely nothing where the lightning had struck me. Not even a scar.

Melchior looked amused. “Nectar and ambrosia.” He said simply. “Literally a godsend. It can fix up just about anything with almost no side effects. Can’t take too much of it though.”

“Why? Will I like… OD or something?” I asked. I had never heard of nectar and ambrosia, and to be quite honest it sounded sketchy.

“No, but too much of it might literally burn you up from the inside out.” He shrugged.

“Oh, so like a fever?” That didn’t sound so bad. A little uncomfortable, but not awful.

“No, it will actually burn you up.” Melchior explained. “Like, you’ll catch on fire. Full on cremated in like three seconds. It happened to one of my cabin mates a few years back. Not a pretty sight.”

I decided not to ask any more questions.

When we got downstairs, Ernst was sitting at a foldable card table playing some game with Mr. Brunner and a guy who looked like he was about 19 or 20. Mr. Brunner looked up at me and smiled.

“Ah, Moritz!” He greeted him. “Care to join in?”

“Mr. Brunner?” I asked. “What’s going on? Why are you here, and who-” 

“Ugh, someone gag him.” The college aged guy said, turning to Mechior. “Did you show him the orientation video?”

“Uh, no sir.” Melchior looked like he wasn’t even aware that an orientation video existed.

I thought it was weird that Melchior was calling this guy “sir”. He wasn’t even that much older than us. 

“Moritz, this is Mr. D.,” Mr. Brunner said. “He’s our camp director.”

“Oh,” I looked at Mr. D. and waved. “Uh, hi-”

“Someone deal him in.” Mr. D. cut me off. Ernst rolled his eyes, but smiled at me and patted the chair next to him. I sat down and he handed me five cards.

“What are we playing?” I whispered. Ernst just shrugged and threw a two of clubs into the pile at the center of the table. Mr. D. hummed appreciatively before skipping me and tossing in a five of hearts triumphantly.

“Beat that!” He looked at Mr. Brunner, who inspected the pile and then took out a queen of clubs and an ace of spades. Mr. D. looked defeated.

“So… what exactly is this place?” I asked, looking around. It seemed just like a normal farm house, with old floral wallpaper, hard wood floors, and the absolute ugliest curtains that I had ever seen. “I mean, you said this was a camp right? Aren’t camps supposed to be like… nature?”

“This is a very… special type of summer camp.” Mr. Brunner said delicately. “It’s for children who are a bit erm… different from their peers.”

“What kind of ‘different’?” I didn’t buy it. There was something about this place that just felt otherworldly. The weird culty vibe that Melchior and Martha gave off, the medicine that could make you spontaneously combust, the fucking minotaur I had to fight just to get here. 

“...Holy shit, I’ve lost my goddamn mind.” I whispered to myself. Last night had to have been some weird hallucination. And these kids were probably just messed up as I was. “Oh my god-”

“Gods.” Mr. D. corrected. Mr. Brunner glared at him, but he just shrugged. “What? He was gonna find out sooner or later.”

“Find out what?” I asked.

Mr. D. laughed, like what I had said was the funniest thing he had ever heard. “Tell me, who are your parents?”

I deflated a little. My birth parents were a bit of a sensitive topic. “I don’t know. They gave me up right after I was born-”

“Wrong.” Mr. D. said, throwing in another card even though I was pretty sure that it was Ernst’s turn.

“Uh, I’m sorry?” I asked defensively. Melchior was now looking over my shoulder, opting to ignore the conversation and focus on my cards instead. He took a seven of diamonds and threw it in the middle on my behalf.

“Uh, what he means is-” Mr. Brunner started, but Mr. D. jumped in again.

“You’re a half-blood.” Mr. D. said.

“... I’m what?” I asked. Melchior at that point had just taken the cards out of my hand and was now playing for me.

“A half-blood.” Mr. Brunner repeated. “Half mortal, half god. The old stories often called them demigods.”

“The old stories…” I said it more to myself than to anyone particular. I remembered Mr. Brunner talking about demigods in his mythology class. “But those are just myths. They aren’t real, they’re just how people explained things before science.”

Mr. D. huffed. “I don’t get why we even bother. The kid killed a fucking minotaur and still doesn’t get it.”

I remembered the minotaur, and how it and Greta had disappeared in a shower of gold light. “Where’s my sister?”

Mr. Brunner hesitated. “She fought bravely, Moritz. We looked everywhere after Ernst told us about the minotaur, but we couldn’t find her. I’m so sorry.”

My mouth was dry. “So she’s gone?”

Mr. D. tsked, shuffling the cards in his hand around. “Mortals always get so choked up on death.” He complained. “You all end up dying anyway, why does it matter how or when you kick it?”

If I were more observant, I would have noticed how he said that. He said “you all”, like he wasn’t included in that group.

I glared at him, really wanting to say something snarky and rude right back at him. “So what does the ‘D’ stand for? Douchebag? Dickhead?” Not my best work, and it was only made worse by the fact that I was actively trying not to cry while I said it.

The room fell silent, and Mr. Brunner went to reprimand me but Mr. D. held up his hand. He looked amused.

“No please, let the kid talk. This is the most interesting thing to happen here in like five years.” He looked back at me. “So, Moritz. How about you tell me what you think my name is?”

He looked me in the eye, and I felt like my soul was burning. His eyes were amber, and if you looked at them for too long it felt like the color was moving. I thought I saw things moving at the edge of my vision, but I also couldn’t look away. There was a warmth in my stomach that was growing uncomfortable. 

He blinked, and looked away, and I was finally free. I remembered his name. The god of wine and madness. “Dionysus.” I answered.

Mr. D. smirked, casually tossing a card into the pile. “Careful,” He said. “Names can be powerful.”

I had never been more terrified of a scrawny 19-year-old in my entire life.

I looked over at Mr. Brunner. “So you knew?” I asked. “When Mrs. Dodds attacked me. You knew it was real, but you didn’t defend me! You let me get expelled!”

Mr. Brunner looked down at his cards, ashamed. “I know I have not been the most honest person, Moritz.” He admitted. “But I do hope that you can forgive me if I start now.”

Mr. Brunner pulled his motorized wheelchair out from the table and steered it to a more open area in front of me. Then, he stood up. The blanket fell out of his lap, and instead of normal human legs, there were skinny legs with copper colored fur that matched the hair on his head. Instead of shoes, he had black hooves. The wheelchair was kicked back as another set of legs came out of a compartment built into the chair.

He flicked his tail and stretched out his back legs. “Ah, that feels much better.”

From the waist up, he looked exactly the same. But from the waist down, Mr. Brunner was a horse.

“My name.” He announced. “Is Chiron.”

I don’t think I said anything. I think I just sat there, staring at him with my jaw on the ground. My Latin teacher was a half horse man. Centaur? I think they’re called centaurs. Mr. Brunner was a centaur.

“You must have many questions, and I wish I could answer them all right now.” He said sympathetically. “But maybe it is for the best that you get some rest.”

He turned to Melchior. “Mr. Gabor, would you mind giving Moritz a tour around-”

“I would love to.” He smiled and winked at me and then turned to Ernst. “Ernie, you wanna come too?”

Ernst nodded looking like he wanted nothing more than to get as far away from Mr. D as possible. Honestly, who could blame him.

We stepped out onto the porch, and I got my first good look at the camp in broad daylight. There were hundreds of kids, all in matching orange t-shirts like the ones Martha and Melchior were wearing. Some hung out in small clusters near the twelve buildings that made a U-Shape around a bonfire that was being tended to by a young girl. There were a few kids, all with the legs of a goat and the top half of a teenage boy, who were juggling apples next to a huge dining pavilion. A couple of older kids were sword fighting, loudly cursing when a group of girls flew just over their heads on the backs of winged horses. The girls laughed as they sped off. Another group of teenagers were tending to the fields of strawberries that ined the edge of the woods, and wherever they went the grass became greener.

I stared at it all in amazement. I had never seen so many kids look so at home in my entire life, and I immediately wanted to run down and try to feel it too.

Melchior and Ernst looked at each other and laughed when they saw me staring at everything in absolute awe. Melchior came up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder.

“Moritz Stiefel,” he said proudly. “Welcome to Camp Half-Blood!”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moritz Stiefel puts the bi in bitch

I followed Ernst and Melchior closely as they led the way through the camp. We walked past the dining pavilion (I got hit in the head with an apple), through the archery practice area (I almost got shot), and past the strawberry fields (nothing happened there, but I did sneak a strawberry off of the bush).

When we made it to the cabins, I noticed something strange. Some of them were full of kids, almost overflowing, while others seemed empty and lifeless.

“That’s the Zeus cabin.” Melchior explained, pointing to the biggest and emptiest cabin.

I squinted at it. It was big and gaudy, and looked like if Vegas had tried to make a casino based off of the ancient greek architecture. The roof and door were both solid gold, and the colloms were a white, sparkly marble that hurt your eyes if you looked at it for too long. There were various statues of the same bearded man, all depicting a myth. I noticed pretty quickly that each of the artistic renderings of Zeus in his battles often left out all of the stories about Zeus seducing anything with legs.

“Huh,” I said. “I think I hate it.”

Melchior nodded, grimacing. “Yeah, I think we all do.” He admitted. “Especially in the morning. Sometimes the light hits the roof just right and it makes the whole thing way too bright to look at.”

Ernst made a noise of discomfort. “I once went completely blind for about an hour after looking at it for too long.”

I laughed, thinking it was a joke. Then Ernst gave me an embarrassed look, and I realized he was being serious. I stopped laughing and gave him an awkward little pat on the shoulder. I also made a mental note to never look at this cabin again.

“Why is it so empty?” I asked. “Isn’t Zeus constantly ruining the lives of countless mortal women? Shouldn’t this place be full to the brim?”  
Thunder roared from just outside the camp, and I jumped. Melchior laughed. “Yeah, might not want to say that. He’s sensitive.”

“Alright...” I tried to pretend like I didn’t just almost jump directly into Melchior’s arms like a scared Scooby-Doo character at the sound of thunder in the distance. I looked at the equally ugly cabin next to it. “And who’s that?”

“That’s Hera,” Ernst said. “She doesn’t have any kids either. You know, the whole ‘Goddess of Marriage' thing. Affairs aren’t her style.”

“Hm.” I imagined having to stay married to a douchebag like Zeus forever with no way out. “Sounds miserable.”

The tour continued, with Melchior describing every cabin with brutal honesty and Ernst chiming in to repeat it all in a nicer way.  
“So which cabin is yours?” I asked Ernst.

He looked over to a cabin that looked like a ski lodge, with a chimney spewing smoke that smelled like cinnamon and a whole bunch of unfairly attractive teenagers hanging out on the porch. They saw Ernst looking over and waved at him.

“Cabin 10,” he said, looking back at me. “Aphrodite.”

Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. I remembered the really weird crush I had on Ernst the first week that I knew him, and suddenly a lot of things made sense.

I looked him in the eyes and noticed that they had changed color. I could have sworn that they were blue or green, but now they were a very light steel grey color. “Dude, what’s up with your eyes?”

At first he looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“They keep changing color,” I explained. “I thought they were green?”

Melchior laughed, taking a closer look at my face. “Huh, well at least we know he’s got some self confidence!”

I saw that Melchior’s eyes were the same color as Ernst’s, which was weird. Maybe they were siblings? I was going to ask Melchior if he was a son of Aphrodite too, but then Ernst explained and I was very glad that I had kept my mouth shut this one time.

“Aphrodite looks different for every person that sees her,” Ernst explained. “So some of her kids have certain parts of their appearance that change depending on who’s looking. For me, it’s my eye color.”

I nodded. Green and blue were my favorite colors, so I guess that made sense. “So is it like a soulmate kind of thing?”

“Oh, no,” Ernst said quickly. “That’s not really my mom’s department. It’s really just an attraction thing. Like, if you’re dating someone or if you’ve got a crush it might change. But it could also just mean that you think someone’s cute. It’s really not anything super deep like soulmates.” 

“So,” Melchior teased. “What color are they now?”

Ernst stifled a laugh and looked back at me. “You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to.” “I don’t think I will.” I was absolutely bright red. I probably looked like a tomato, and I’m sure that it was only made worse when Melchior threw his arm around my shoulder and continued with the tour like that. He kept trying to guess the color, but I wasn’t budging and he eventually gave up.

“And here we are!” He announced, stopping in front of Cabin 11. “Welcome to Hell!”

Cabin 11 looked like a regular summer camp cabin, or at least it would have if it wasn’t for all of the random, hastily builded add ons that jutted from the sides. It looked unfinished, and judging by the planks of wood that were leaning against the side of the cabin I was starting to think it might be.

Ernst waved goodbye to us and went to join his siblings on the porch of the Aphrodite cabin. Melchior smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, it’s kind of under renovation right now. We ran out of room a few summers back, and we had to quickly put on some add-ons. But then we had a huge drop in numbers, and now we’re trying to use the time to actually make the add-ons livable.”

I furrowed my eyebrows. “Why did you have a huge drop in numbers?” I asked.

“Oh, there were a few reasons.” He said. “A few of them went to college, some of them died, some got claimed-”

“Wait, what did you say?” I asked, hoping I heard him wrong.

“Oh, I said they got claimed,” he explained. “It means that their godly parent claimed them as theirs, so they moved into their parent’s cabin.”

Not the information I was looking for, but good to know nonetheless. I looked at cabin 11 again. “So it’s like the unclaimed cabin?”

“Actually, it’s the Hermes cabin.” Melchior said bitterly. “But he’s the god of travelers, so we take everyone. We’re literally the reject cabin.” He looked at me. “Oh, uh... no offense.”

“None taken.” I was lying. I was a little offended. And I was 100% going to pretend that this cute boy did not just say that to me. I had enough going on in my brain at that moment, I didn’t need this too.

Melchior smiled. He opened the door, and I immediately saw about thirty kids all lounging around. There were tons of bunk beds, but there were probably an equal number of sleeping bags spread out on any available expanse of flooring.

“You’re lucky,” Melchior said as we stepped over kids who were napping, playing uno, or just about anything in between. They all moved their stuff out of the way, carrying on as if this was just par for the course. “We had an actual bunk open up about a week ago. Just watch out, some of the older kids might put a snake in your sheets. They’ve been at each other's throats trying to get me to give it to them.”

The bunk was all the way in the back, which was nice because it wasn’t really in the more densely populated area. I sat on the bottom bunk, happy to just have a moment of quiet. Melchior smirked. 

“Believe it or not, the best part about this is the bunkmate.” He knocked on the metal frame. 

“Hey, sunshine! How about you be social for a second?”

I climbed off the bed and looked up at the top bunk. There, curled up under a fluffy purple blanket, was Martha. She groaned before opening her eyes and glaring at Melchior. She sat up straight, blanket still draped over her thin shoulders. Martha looked at me, still seeming unimpressed.

My mouth went dry, and I probably sat there for about ten seconds with my mouth open awkwardly. Pretty girls always made me nervous.

“Uh, hi. I’m-” I started.

“I know who you are.” She had that kind of calm voice that still somehow made you feel uneasy. “We met this morning.”

“Oh, uh,” I said very intelligently. “Yeah.”

She blinked a few times. “Can you pass me that book on the bedside table, please?”  
I looked down next to the head of my bunk. 

There was a wooden crate with a fancy floral napkin laying on top of it and a book that was placed to keep it from blowing away. The cover of the book was of a variety of statues, relics, and monuments with “World History” written in big, yellow letters. I picked it up along with the napkin and handed it to her.

“Thank you,” she said, putting the napkin aside and cracking the book open.

Melchior smiled. “Well, I need to get going. There’s a cabin counselor’s meeting in a few minutes at the dining pavilion.” He waved goodbye. “You two have fun! I’ll probably be back before dinner. If not, Martha knows what to do.” 

Martha gave him a thumbs up as he left. I figured I shouldn’t just stand there and watch Martha read her book. I sat down on my bed, letting a few moments of silence pass by before I said anything.

“So...” I said. “You’re dad’s Hermes? That sounds cool.”

“No,” she said, sounding bored but not really annoyed. Progress?

“Oh. So you’re unclaimed?” I asked. “I am too.”

“No, I’m not unclaimed.” Martha answered. “And yeah. I know you’re unclaimed. You just got here.”

“Wait, why are you in this cabin if you’re already claimed?” Now I was just confused. When were things here going to start actually making sense?

I could hear her turning the page of her book, which I think was her trying to tell me politely to shut up. “My dad doesn’t have a cabin.”

“Well who’s your dad then?” Was this offensive? Was I being offensive right there? Was I not supposed to just ask people who their godly parent was?

“Hades.” Martha said it very deadpanned (pun wholeheartedly intended). Maybe it was best to not annoy the daughter of the god of the dead. She might literally send me to hell if I kept talking.

She didn’t seem to be upset by this. The conversation was officially over.

Melchior did in fact come back before dinner. Which was good. I’m not sure where else he would have gone.

Turns out being a cabin counselor was just a fun way of saying babysitter. Which I found funny seeing as most of the members of cabin 11 were older than him. Still, they seemed to listen when he asked them to do something.

“He’s been here longer than almost all of us,” one of the other Hermes campers said with a shrug. “Just seems fair for him to be in charge.”

Yeah, that sounded fair enough. I guess leadership just goes to whoever managed to exist in one area the longest. That was fine. That made sense.

Melchior lined all thirty-something of us and matched us down to the dining pavilion. The tables were all set up in the same way the cabins were, with each table being for an individual god. 

Ernst was seated a few tables away, sitting with all of the other Aphrodite campers. He smiled and waved when he saw me come in.

We lined up to get our food, and I noticed people scraping parts of their plate into the fire at the end of the line.

“Is the food really that bad?” I leaned forward to ask Melchior, giving my hamburger a very suspicious look. I had been having a weird day, and if it decided to grow legs I wouldn’t have been too surprised.

Melchior laughed. “Offering to the gods. Because fucking with our lives just isn’t enough. They really like feeling appreciated.”

There was a roar of thunder in the distance again, and Melchior just kind of flipped off the sky in its general direction. Charming. Innovative. Never-before-seen.

I couldn’t tell if it was a genuine feeling of solidarity or if it was just the trauma and need for support speaking, but I had a feeling that I was going to like Melchior.

I sat at the Hermes table, squeezed in between him and Martha (who was still reading her book). 

I watched as Melchior laughed along with the other kids, taking a few sips out of his cup. I looked in my own cup, but saw that it was empty.

Martha really did let me sit there and stare at an empty cup for almost five minutes straight before she decided to say anything.

“You have to tell it what you want,” she explained.

I must have just stared at her, looking very confused and maybe a little bit dumb. She picked up her own cup and held it up to where I could see it. “Cherry pepsi,” She said.

The cup filled with a fizzy brown liquid, and she smiled at it before taking a sip. I looked down at my own cup. “And it can be anything I want?”

“Yup. As long as it’s non-alcoholic.” She laughed. She had actually put her book down, which I was considering to be a victory. I picked up my cup.

Anything I wanted. That was a lot of power. I sat there, thinking about what I could have. I wasn’t allowed to have any energy drinks, so I could get a little rebellious and try that. But then I might not be able to sleep later. My foster father hated Dr. Pepper, and it wasn’t allowed in the apartment in any capacity. That seemed like a fun new way to say “fuck you” to him from a long distance. But I didn’t really know if I liked Dr. Pepper.

After a lot of thought, I realized that this was too much power. I asked the cup to please give me some water. It was only my first night, I should save the more big-ticket drinks for another day. 

Martha laughed. Like, she actually laughed. Not like the weird exhale out of your nose that she had done a little bit ago that I had very generously labeled as a laugh. Like a real laugh that made a noise and everything.

I looked around at the table of kids, all of them different ages and clearly coming from different backgrounds, and for the first time ever I actually felt like I was a part of something. Dinner went on, and I even found myself joining in on a few conversations.

I was learning names, hearing stories about my fellow campers, and at one point I even got the confidence to ask Martha about her book. The conversation that the two of us had on the Tudor dynasty was short, but it was also actually pleasant.

Maybe I was going to like it here after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to my friends Olivia and Jalisa for beta reading these chapters! They’re awesome and without them I would just be a grammatically incorrect fool


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We got spears

Things actually started to fall into a routine for a while. I would train with the rest of the newer campers, hang out with Ernst in my down time, and eat dinner with the rest of Cabin 11 at the dining pavilion.

Even the crowded, hectic cabin was starting to feel welcoming. After all, there was nothing like being woken up by one of your cabin mates, pushing another a bit too hard, and having them land on you at three in the morning to really make you feel close to those around you.

I’d met a ton of people around camp too. There was Georg, a son of Apollo who taught me archery and had a genuinely inhuman amount of patience. He was about fourteen or fifteen, and was doing an amazing job at not ripping his hair out every time I missed the target horribly.

Anna Wheelin was one of the Demeter kids that would tend to the strawberry fields in her down time. I would usually sit there whenever Ernst and Melchior were too busy to hang out, so she and I would trade stories about stuff that happened to us before we came to camp. She had only been there a few months longer than I had, so she was a bit easier to talk to about stuff like that than everyone else was.  
I told her about Greta once and her eyes lit up. 

“You knew Greta?” She had been picking strawberries while I was making a weird, incredibly long dandelion chain and fastening it to the frame of her wheelchair. She was doing me a favor by pretending she thought it looked nice.  
“Yeah,” I smiled, “she’s—”

I stopped, the reality setting in again. Sometimes, when everything was quiet and peaceful, I would forget she was dead.

Anna looked down at me, putting aside her strawberry basket. “I get it,” she said. “She was my sister too.”

I looked up at that. “Wait really? I didn’t know she was a half-blood.” That shouldn’t have been so surprising. I was starting to find out that there was apparently a lot of stuff I didn’t know.

“Yeah!” Anna sounded more cheerful. “She would stop by once or twice a week during the first few months I was here. She would help us out with activities and she even taught me archery! She always told us about her little brother.” Anna smiled at me. “She was really proud of you.”

The conversation ended there, mainly because I didn’t really know what Greta could have possibly been proud of. But I did feel better knowing that I wasn’t completely alone.

Though not everyone I met was as nice. Thea, an Ares camper who I had an unfortunate run in with on my second day, was definitely not a fan of my head still being attached to my shoulders. 

I’ll spare you the more... embarrassing details, but the short version of the story is that she tried to give me a swirly in the girls bathroom, and I guess I accidentally made the toilets explode. Or at least, Martha said that I did. She had been a very unhelpful bystander in the incident, but afterwards she and Ernst (who had stayed outside because he didn’t want to go into the girls bathroom and infringe upon someone’s rights) argued for ten minutes about who’s team I would be on for capture the flag.

Martha won.

So, capture the flag was nothing like I expected it to be.

Maybe I was being optimistic, but I had really hoped that it was going to be a nice, simple camp activity with low stakes and no real peril. 

But this is Camp Half-Blood where the rock climbing wall leaks lava and you can’t go out after curfew or else the harpies will eat you.

So of course when I showed up to the activities field and saw kids with full suits of gladiator armor, tables covered in battle plans, and real weapons waiting on standby.

“Great,” I said, following closely behind Melchior and Ernst. “I’m gonna get maimed.”

“Don’t worry!” Ernst turned to face me. “Chiron banned any serious maiming months ago! You'll   
probably be fine.”

This was not comforting in any way. I wanted to know what exactly had happened a few months back, but I also never wanted to know and would much rather die ignorant.

Ernst broke off from our little group, running to join the red team. I was on the blue team, which I had been told hadn’t won a game in two years. So that’s nice.

Martha was the one leading our team, which made sense. I had only been there for a few days, but I knew that Martha was someone to be respected. I had no idea what would happen if I didn’t respect her, but I really didn’t want to find out.

She walked up to us, sword in hand and armour on. No twelve-year-old should ever look that terrifying. She looked at me, and I suddenly felt like I was both very vulnerable and incredibly underdressed.

“There’s an armor rack over at the pavilion,” she said, one of the few times she had actually spoken to me directly. “You’re probably a size four.”

Melchior looked me up and down and hummed thoughtfully. “Are you factoring in height? Because I think he’s a size five.”

“Yeah but he’s thin,” she countered.

This argument went on for a little while before Melchior decided we were going to get a size five regardless. It was in fact too big and was really loose around the shoulders and waist. Probably not ideal for something that’s meant to keep me from getting injured, but I figured I didn’t really know enough about armour to say anything.

I was given a sword and a helmet with a blue plume and sent off into the team huddle. Thea, the girl who I had blown a toilet up on, was the team leader of the red team. Granted, I don’t think she was supposed to be. I think one of the older Aphrodite kids was supposed to be leading, but Thea had taken over and they didn’t have the energy to stop her at this point.

Martha kneeled down, and instinctively the rest of the group followed. “Here’s the plan.” She pointed at some markings in the dirt that seemed to make sense to the rest of the group but were basically hieroglyphs to me.

“Otto and Georg, you guys are on tree duty,” she said, pointing to an area on the crudely drawn dirt map.

Georg and Otto high-fived and ran off to take their position.

Martha turned to Anna. “Can you do defensive measures with Melchior?”

Anna had a wicked grin on her face, and she whispered something into Melchior’s ear. He looked impressed, and the two took off without another word.

Martha assigned a few more roles before she turned to me. She pointed at an “x” marked next to the river. “You’re guarding the west end of the bank. Keep an eye on the woods and don’t let anyone cross. I’ll be right here, and I’ll signal you if we need you to move east to secure the flag.”

I nodded. Ok, that sounded easy enough. I didn’t really take off like everyone else had, but instead I casually walked over to my assigned spot. My sword felt unbalanced in my hand, which wasn’t surprising since I was starting to discover that most swords felt awkward when I held them. I was starting to think it was less about the sword and more about the wielder.

Things were pretty quiet at the river bank. I paced, swinging my sword limply at my side. I kicked a few rocks and looked up at the woods every once in a while. For most of the game there was nothing. I was free to sit there and pretend I was being useful.

After almost an hour, I heard some rustling in the bushes. There were voices talking in a terribly loud version of a whisper, and it sounded like they were coming my way.

I tried to hold the sword in a more threatening way, but it had the same energy of that picture of the stuffed duck holding the plastic knife. I am not very threatening.

Thea came into the clearing, followed by a handful of boys I recognized from the Hephaestus and Ares cabin. I tightened my grip on my sword, but it honestly wasn’t going to do me any good.

Thea saw me and smirked. The boys behind her looked pretty amused as well, which was probably due to the fact that I didn’t look too threatening in my oversized armour. My helmet wasn’t even on, it was chilling next to the river being of no use to me.

“The flag isn’t here.” I said that like that was going to make them just turn around and leave with no other issues.

Just for the record, I want it to be known that it wasn’t Thea I was afraid of. She was like 4’11 and thinner than a toothpick. Sometimes she would push up her wire rimmed glasses and the thought would cross my mind that if it came down to a fight I could probably win. But most of her other siblings? They were jacked. They could probably hug me and it would crush my spine. Good thing they seemed to hate me, so hugging wasn’t going to be an issue. But spears and knives might be.

Thea looked smug. “Maybe I don’t care about the flag.”

“That would be kind of counterproductive in a game of ‘capture-the-flag.’” You see, dear reader, that is the kind of thought that was supposed to stay inside my head because saying things like that tend to give people a reason to beat you up.  
Thea scowled. “Gaston!”

I paled a bit when a pretty big guy walked forward, spear in hand. Gaston looked like he could probably crush me with minimum effort and then just go about his day. Though I’ll admit, it took a lot of self control to not make fun of his name. But it wasn’t my best material anyway, so it wasn’t a total loss. Disney jokes are usually classified as pretty low hanging fruit.

I was ready for Gaston to spear me right through the chest like one of those tiny hotdogs that they serve with the little toothpicks through the middle when he suddenly passed the spear to Thea. I was confused, but before I could process if this was some kind of insult or not, she leapt forward.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to fight off a spear with a sword, but let me just say that it is incredibly awkward. And Thea? She was fast.

I was stumbling backwards more than I was really moving on my own accord. Thea was moving at a dizzying pace, and when I would try to maybe strike back she seemingly disappeared and reappeared somewhere else.

I guess she got bored of watching me trip over my own feet, and she finally just shoved the tip of her spear into my shoulder.

My hand grabbed onto the wound, and I tried very hard not to scream or cry. “Hey, no maiming!” Was the best I could think of.

Thea shrugged “Oops.” She then used the butt of her spear to knock me into the river like I weighed nothing, which made the pseudo-apology feel a little empty.

I fell backwards into the river, and I half expected to drown. I could hear Thea laughing, which was a little bit fucked up.

But then the pain in my shoulder disappeared. Suddenly, I could feel energy rushing through my body. I stood up, or rather I was pushed up by the water, but I wasn’t wet. In fact, I was as dry as I had been before I fell in.

Thea stared in awe for a while, but then looked annoyed. She picked her spear back up and lunged forward again, but this time I was faster. The sword in my hand still felt unbalanced, but now I was better at it.

The boys behind her backed away, and Thea became distracted by something above my head. The blade of my sword broke her spear in two, but she didn’t seem to care. She said something, but I couldn’t hear her over the sudden roaring as the blue team captured the red team’s flag.

Martha emerged from a bush, also staring at me. That was when I noticed a faint glow of sea green. I looked up and saw something glowing above my head. I didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t seem to be good judging by the reaction it was getting.

There was a flood of campers from both teams returning to camp either in victory or defeat, but they stopped when they saw me. Eventually, Chiron and Mr. D. arrived on scene to see what the hold up was.

Melchior stood in the front, the flag in his hand and a look of absolute horror on his face. I would make out the murmurs of the crowd and Chiron and Mr. D. stared at me like I had grown a second head.

“... The big three...” One kid whispered.

“... That’s not possible, the oath...” Another said.

“... The other two have already broken it...” “... The prophecy said...”

“... But what about Martha?”

Martha?

I looked up to where she had been standing, separate from the rest of the group. She looked angry. Or maybe confused? It was probably a mix of both. She saw me staring at her, and her face hardened. She turned around and disappeared into the shadowy trees behind her.

Chiron cleared his throat, and suddenly all eyes were on him. Everyone went silent as he took a few steps forward. I stood there waiting to see what he would say next.

He kneeled down in front of me, as a sign of respect I think. But it felt empty, especially when I saw everyone but Mr. D. and Melchior do the same.

“Welcome, Moritz Stiefel,” He began, making my attention shift back to him. He looked up at me, and I saw this pain in his eyes. I didn't understand it at the time, but he was looking at me like he was watching someone behind me raising a sword over my head. I looked over at Melchior, who seemed like he was already wondering which flowers I would like the best on my grave.

Chiron must have remembered that he had stopped speaking, and he cleared his throat. 

“Welcome, Moritz Stiefel,” he repeated, but this time his voice broke slightly as he said my name, “son of Poseidon.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I won't lie, I'm not a fan of this chapter. I've rewritten this three times and I'm still not fully satisfied. But I've done all I can, and I hope you guys like it! I promise the next chapter will be much better quality.

The Poseidon cabin was lonely. 

It wasn’t supposed to have beds in it, so I was currently sleeping on a blow-up mattress on the ground in a corner. The cabin had a little fountain of water on one of the walls, which was very helpful if you happened to wake up in the middle of the night with a dry throat… or it would have been if it hadn’t been saltwater. That is not a fun discovery to make at three in the morning.

I missed the Hermes cabin. The quiet of cabin three was too much sometimes. There was part of me that wanted to pack my few belongings back up and see if I could talk Chiron into letting me go back. But then I remembered what happened last time I was there.

I had been getting my stuff from our shared bunk, with several older campers watching as I did so. I knew that the moment I walked out of sight, they were going to rip each other limb from limb over who would get upgraded from the floor to the now-open bunk. Martha was there, pretending to read her book.

Was saying something to her necessary? No. Was I going to do it anyway? Absolutely.

“So did I do something to you?” I asked, but it came out a little more polite than I wanted it to. Martha looked up from her book and frowned. She didn’t even answer me, she just shrugged and went back to staring at the page. I saw that her eyes still weren’t moving, so I spoke up again.

“You were using me as bait, weren’t you?” Now I did successfully sound pissed off. “You knew Thea was still mad at me!”

“She wasn’t going to do anything.” Martha argued. “I was right there, If she had hurt you too badly I would have come out and helped you.”

“She put a spear through my shoulder!” I never thought those were words that I would say, but I did have the faint scar to prove it.

Martha rolled her eyes and closed the book. “You healed just fine. Don’t be so dramatic.”

I really wanted to point out that Martha couldn’t have possibly known I would heal. I wanted to yell at her. But she gave me a look that had a clear and precise message. “You are dismissed”.

I grabbed my Camp Half-Blood drawstring backpack of belongings and left. I knew that look all too well.

I laid in bed that night making a mental list of the positives of this situation. I was technically a cabin counselor, which means I could go to meetings with Melchior. He was always talking about how he and the Aphrodite cabin sneak a few pizzas and sodas into those meetings. And I got to set my own time for lights out.

It also meant that I got the showers to myself. Which was pretty cool. And the cabins closest to me were empty so I didn’t need to worry about making too much noise. I didn’t have to find a corner to change clothes in. Honestly, there wasn’t really even a reason for me to wear pants after dinner.

I was almost alright with everything that was going on when I heard a knock on the cabin door. I didn’t move, figuring it was just the harpies trying to lure me out (they didn’t really get to eat kids that often, which at least means that the other campers were good at adhering to the rules). But the knocking persisted, and so I hesitantly dragged myself out of bed to see who it is.

When I opened the door I saw no one. I sighed, moving to close the door when I suddenly felt something push past me. I thought it might be a fury, and made a move to grab something I could use to defend myself.

That’s when Melchior took off the baseball cap.

“Surprise!” He announced, dumping a pile of junk food onto the floor. I stumbled back a little, a fair reaction to someone appearing out of thin air and dumping snack food at your feet.

“Wait, what are you-? How did-?” I stuttered, gesturing from him, to the hat, to the pile of food on my floor. Melchior invited himself in, lifting the old, battered yankee’s cap and shaking it a bit. “Martha’s cap.”

He tossed it over to me and I caught it with some sliver of grace. I looked at it from every angle, looking for anything out of the ordinary. From what I could tell, it was just an ordinary baseball cap. It took embarrassingly long for me to realize that Melchior was waiting for me to put it on.

I placed the cap on my head and was about to mention how loose it was when the adjustable band suddenly tightened on it’s own. For a moment I felt weightless, then heavier than lead, and then back to normal. I looked down at my feet and saw nothing.

“Where did you get this?” I asked, holding my hands out in front of me and still seeing nothing but what was behind them.

“Martha.” Melchior answered, and my mouth fell open so wide that I was really glad Melchior couldn’t see me and make a fish joke.

“Did you steal it?” I asked in a hushed whisper, as if Martha could hear me from all the way across the camp. 

Melchior laughed. “Do I look like I have a death wish? I borrowed it.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Your definition of ‘borrow’ or mine?” Of course, the Hermes cabin did have a third definition. But it usually involved a struggle. Seeing as Melchior couldn’t in his wildest dreams win a fight against Martha, I ruled it out.

Melchior rolled his eyes. “Your definition. I told her I needed it to sneak a snake into Thea’s bed.

I laughed at that. “Well did you?”

“I am a man of my word!” He put his hands up in joking surrender. I made a note to listen for a scream from the Ares cabin.

I leaned down and picked up one of the snacks, a little disappointed that it didn’t disappear too. That’s about when the already tight grip around my head tightened further, making me drop the hostess cupcake back to the ground. “Shit, how do you loosen this?”

Melchior’s eyes widened. “Oh, yeah! You might want to take it off now! Magical items are… temperamental.”

I grabbed at the brim, and the band let go with one quick tug. I watched my arm phase back into existence, a little weirded out. “What do you mean temperamental?”

“Well they uh... “ He chose his next words carefully. “Tend to reflect their owner’s feelings.”

I nodded looking at the cap with an angry pout. “And she hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you, she just…” Melchior made a weird noise from the back of his throat before giving up. “Ok, so she hates you. But if it makes you feel better, it’s not really your fault.”

“How is that supposed to make me feel better?” I asked, tossing the hat onto the bed before it decided to strangle me. 

“Listen, Martha’s just a bit… confused. She’ll come around.” Melchior sat down on the mattress. “She thought she was the only one, you know?”

“No, I actually don’t.” I said. “You guys have this really annoying habit of not telling me things. The only what?”

“Child of the big three.” Melchior said, like that was supposed to mean anything to me. 

“The big three what? Gods? Why does that matter?” I sat down next to him and flopped backwards onto the bed, nearly hitting my head against the wall.

“Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. The three oldest gods.” Melchior explained. “It didn’t really used to mean anything, demigod children of those three used to be the most common, actually. Well… more Zeus and Poseidon than Hades. And with them having so many kids, the demigods just weren’t that powerful. Only so much magic to go around, I guess. The more kids a god has the less power they have. But then I guess they got a prophecy a while back that said something about one of their kids. They all took an oath to stop having kids, so I guess it must have been pretty bad.”

“Well, was it?” I asked, still not getting what he was saying.

Melchior shrugged. “Not sure. Chiron won’t tell us and they didn’t really have any kids until… well-”

“Now?” I finished the sentence, sounding a little bit cold. “Glad to know.”

We sat in silence for a little while before I spoke again. “So… is it just me and Martha, or did Zeus break the oath too?”

Melchior’s jaw clenched, and he looked down at the floor. I wondered if I shouldn’t have asked, but then his voice came in a tight whisper, like he was saying it against his own will “Yes.”

I knew better than to ask anything else.

Suddenly the suffocating quiet of the Poseidon cabin was feeling quite welcoming. We didn’t talk for a while, letting whatever strange tension had built up dissolve into the air.

Melchior cleared his throat, taking a can of coke out of his backpack and handing it to me. “To deadbeat dads, right?”

I laughed and clinked my aluminum can against his in a toast, figuring that it was best not to ask where he had gotten them from.

“To deadbeat dads.”

I woke up the next morning asleep half on the floor, a few empty cans of coke and junk food wrappers scattered around me. My head was bent at a weird angle on the top of their mattress, leaving an uncomfortable kink in my neck.

Melchior was standing over me, shaking my shoulder. His hand was wet, and for a moment I thought that he had taken an unplanned swim in the saltwater fountain. That is until I opened my eyes and saw the door was wide open.

He pulled me to my feet, dragging me to the doorway. It was raining. I didn’t understand what the big deal was, or why Melchior looked so terrified until he spoke.

“It never rains in Camp Half-Blood.” He said it as a fact, and I remembered the roars of thunder in the distance on the pavilion. I looked back at the rain, suddenly realizing what it meant.

The gods were angry.

Chiron called an emergency councilor’s meeting on the pavilion, though it was worth mentioning that most people present weren’t councilors at all. Martha stood amongst them, one of the many people who were throwing me suspicious looks when they thought I wasn’t looking.

Chiron had left to consult with the oracle, which couldn’t have been a good sign. We all fell silent when we heard the sound of hooves clopping against the wet concrete. Chiron walked in, looking solemnly at the floor.

“Zeus’ lightning bolt has been stolen.” Chiron said immediately, which I assumed wasn’t a good sign. The whole pavilion seemed to hold their breath.

“But what does that have to do with us?” One of the Apollo kids asked, giving me a nervous look. Chiron looked at me as well, though not with as much malice as the boy had.

“He thinks- that is to say, he believes…” I’ve never known Chiron to be at a loss for words. He looked away from me, but everyone had already figured out what he meant to say.

“... He thinks one of us stole it.” Melchior said, phrasing it as politely as he could. He looked at me, with a mix of pity and concern.

Zeus thinks I stole it.

Chiron cleared his throat after a moment of tense silence. “Counselors for cabins 3 and 11 please stay. The rest of you are dismissed.”

There was a murmur of disapproval amongst the demigods as they filed out of the pavilion slowly. Ernst stood where he was, glancing over at me nervously before leaving as well.

No one spoke for a while as we waited for either the tension or the storm to die down a bit. It was wearing on my already fraying words while I waited for the accusation to come.

“I didn’t steal it.” I finally said, but it didn’t sound very confident over the sounds of rain and thunder outside. Chiron nodded. He reached out to put his hand on my shoulder, but I backed away. I didn’t want him to try and act paternal while he accused me of stealing from a god.

He looked offended, but he didn’t try to reach for me again. “You must understand Moritz, Zeus and Poseidon have an age old rivalry. It wouldn’t be too shocking for one to send-”

“I don’t care about their rivalry!” I said with more conviction. “And I never asked to be his son! I didn’t ask for any of this! Why would I ever do anything for him? What has he done for me?”

“Moritz, please calm down! I don’t think you stole it either-” He started speaking, but I cut him off again.

“Don’t tell me to calm down!” I hated it when adults told me that. “You can’t tell me to calm down when you’re a half horse man, and my dad’s a god, and my pre algebra teacher was a monster, and- and-” I had successfully overwhelmed myself. “This stuff didn’t even exist last week! And what about this ‘big three’ prophecy bullshit? When were you going to tell me about that?”

Chiron blinked before giving Melchior an accusatory glare. “I was hoping to wait until you were settled in before telling you about that.” He turned back to me, and I had the sudden urge to hit him. I didn’t, but I thought about it for a while. “I understand that this is a lot to take in, but I assure you that no one here believes that you stole anything. We only want to help you, Moritz.”

I wanted to yell some more, but it wasn’t worth it. “What do I have to do?” I asked.

Chiron signed, reaching out for my shoulder and guiding me to the archway of the pavilion towards the big house. I didn’t flinch this time.

“Melchior, will you show Moritz to the attic?” He asked. “I think it’s time he pays a visit to the oracle.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm not fully satisfied with this one either, but the next one gets a bit more interesting so just bare with me.

“So who is the oracle?” It took an unreasonably long time for me to ask the question, but we had climbed the stairs to the third floor of the big house on the hill (so cleverly named the Big House) and there wasn’t anywhere else we could go.

Melchior smiled and pulled down a string on the ceiling. A little door opened, and the ladder to the attic fell down at my feet. I guess I was wrong.

“Not who.” He corrected, ever so unhelpfully. “What.”

“What?” Now I just sounded like a broken record. I was getting pretty tired of asking questions today.

“Exactly!” Melchior went to pat my shoulder, but I moved away. I wasn’t in a playful mood. He seemed a little hurt by this, but he didn’t say anything about it. “You’ll know what I mean once you get up there…”

I felt bad. After all, he wasn’t who I was mad at. In fact, he might have been on the much shorter list of people who I was actually thankful to have right about now. I thought about apologizing, but decided that I didn’t have the mental capacity to do so right now. Instead, I just nodded at nothing he said in particular and climbed up.

The Big House’s attic looked pretty normal at first. A jumbled, cluttered mess of old and dusty objects and boxes labeled in thick, black sharpie. It wasn’t until you looked closer that you noticed the clutter was various swords and axes or that the boxes were labeled “winter armor, size XL”. The sense of normality was nice while it lasted.

I looked around, but could say with certainty that I was the only living thing up there. “Hello?” I called out, but there wasn’t an answer. I took a step further into the dark, dusty air, the floorboards cracking as I did so. “Anyone up here?”

Then I remembered what Melchior said. I was looking for a “what”, not a “who”. I started looking through the shelves for something that could maybe tell my future. Maybe something glowing? Yeah, that sounded about right.

There was a russle of fabric, and to say that I almost pissed my pants would be an understatement. I whipped my head around, and saw the pile of books and scrolls surrounding a green, puffy armchair that was backlit by the single window. But what really was worth noting was the sheet draped over part of the chair. The sheet with something moving underneath it.

I almost booked it back down the ladder when I heard it speak.

“Moritz Stiefel…” The voice sounded raspy, like the old people in those PSAs that started smoking when they were like 3. I let out a sigh of relief. That voice was clearly human. Melchior must have just been fucking with me, I actually was looking for a “who”.

“You scared me.” I laughed awkwardly, putting down the weird glass eye I had found on a shelf. The person didn’t take the sheet off, but they stood up.

“Moritz Stiefel…” The voice sounded like a woman, but I still wasn’t sure. I watched as they stumbled up, walking with a strange limp. It looked like they might have been napping before I came up, so maybe they were still tired?

I took a step over a box and started walking over to them. “Sorry I woke you up… Do you need help with the sheet? It’s kinda… still on you?”

The person grunted, and I took that as permission. I grabbed one corner of the sheet and tore it off with one motion, sending the dust around me flying. That’s probably when I started screaming.

The thing underneath the sheet was in fact decidedly not human. At least not anymore.

There, standing upright and looking at me where her eyes used to be, was a corpse. More specifically a mummified woman who’s clothes looked like they were from the 70’s. Her jaw was almost falling off, and one of her hands looked like it already had.

I fell backwards, landing with a crash into a pile of miscellaneous armor and shields (I better consider myself lucky it wasn’t swords… or unlucky. Depends on your perspective, I suppose).

“Moritz Stiefel…” That's when I realized she was asking me to confirm that it was me. 

I cleared my throat, but it didn’t stop my voice cracking. “Uh… yeah. Present.” I waved, but I don’t know why. She didn’t have eyes, it’s not like she could see me.

Her head fell forward, like she was looking down on me. Green smoke poured from her eye sockets, then from the bottom of her jaw. I held my breath as she began to speak, her voice no longer weak but rather booming through the echoey room.

“You shall go west to face the god who has turned,  
You shall find what was stolen and see it returned.  
You shall be betrayed by one who calls you friend,  
And you shall fail to save what matters in the end.”

The smoke stopped, and just as suddenly as she had begun speaking the mummy collapsed with her head landing a foot away from where I was laying. I was still paralyzed, too scared to move and too weak to scream. An old greek vase was next to me, depicting some myth involving a ship. I pulled it towards me, just in case I needed to throw up.

I didn’t bother to begin processing what she had said. Why bother? I was going to fail. It didn’t matter.

I pulled myself up, and silently made my way down the ladder. Melchior was waiting where I had left him, looking pale. So he had heard. Wonderful.

We didn’t talk as we went downstairs. Just a type of quiet that felt heavy and cold.

Chiron and Mr. D. where waiting in the living room, looking as detached as ever. Melchior had regained his color, and was even giving his usual mischievous smirk. I’m sure I didn’t look nearly as unaffected.

“Won’t you sit, Moritz?” Chiron gestured towards a chair. As much as I wanted to say no in the rudest way possible, I still felt lightheaded. I sank into the chair, grateful that it was so overstuffed that it began to swallow me as I leaned back. 

“So what did she say?” Mr. D. got right to the point. Chiron hissed something at him in greek, what I think may have been an insult or a warning. I didn’t mind. I was sent to get answers, now I had to relay the information.

“I have to go west. Something about a ‘god who has turned’. Then I give the lightning bolt back.” I left out the betrayal. And the failure, I suppose. They would find out eventually.

Chiron muttered something before continuing outloud. “Hades… I suppose we should have guessed as much. Melchior, Will you please go to the infirmary and get a small dose of ambrosia for Moritz? He doesn’t look well. And please let Georg know while your there that you will need him to put together a questing pack-”

I stopped listening. I didn’t know what he was talking about, or why Hades is in the west, or what exactly is in a questing pack. And I didn’t care. We had an answer, I was innocent. If they wanted Hades to give back the bolt, they can send his kid to talk to him. 

“I’m not going.” I said it with more conviction than I should have been able to. The room fell silent.

“What do you mean you aren’t going?” Mr. D. asked, but it sounded more like a threat than a question. I was used to questions like that. The kind that if you answer you get slapped and if you don’t you get pushed into the nearest wall.

“I said I’m not going!” I had no idea where this boldness was coming from, but it wasn’t from a place of common sense or self preservation. This was a god I was yelling at. If he saw fit, he could turn me into a little puddle of wine and I would be nothing more than a stain on this ugly yellow chair. But I continued anyway. “You know who did it, so now it’s your problem.”

“Moritz, we still need someone to-” Chiron started calmly, but I cut him off.

“If you need someone so badly, then send Martha. If I get called in to fix my shitty dad’s problems, then she should too!” I leaned forward, actively ignoring Melchior and his mimed attempts to get me to stop talking.

“Listen, kid. You don’t just turn down a quest.” Mr. D. explained it to me like I was three, which just set me off even more.

“Yeah?” I answered, standing up just a little too quickly. “How about you fucking watch me?”

No one spoke, and I took that as my cue to leave. Preferably before the blood rushing to my head made me pass out. That would probably ruin the entire vibe.

The next morning, I woke up with a newspaper stabbed into my cabin door with a dagger. Not the most subtle way to get my attention, but it worked I suppose.

The headline read “Have You Seen me?”, and had been shoved between a news article about drug addicts and an ad for a deli downtown. A picture of Greta taken from an old Facebook post was there, as well as my yearbook photo. I tore the knife out of the wood of the door and unfolded the paper. Another photo was attached, a close up on Sir’s totaled car laying in the ditch we had left it in.

I didn’t bother reading the rest of the article, but I did look at the part that my tormentor had taken the liberty of highlighting for me. Highlighted in pink was the information on the $10,000 reward for any information on me, as well as the police tip line’s phone number.

I crumpled the paper up, tossing it back out into the rain and throwing the dagger somewhere into my cabin. It was mine now.

The rain let up after a while, but the anti-me microaggressions didn’t. Everything from the glares to the rude gestures when I passed by. I pretended not to notice, but I won’t claim that I was good at pretending not to notice. I may be stupid, but I’m not blind. Besides, it’s not like I wasn’t already familiar with stuff like that. I went to public school for a while, I’m no stranger to getting dirty looks and the middle finger.

What bothered me was the people who seemed to be afraid of me. Those who would walk a little bit faster when they had to pass by me on the way to the dining pavilion, or who would make an excuse to not fight against me for training. I usually ended up with Melchior, and he usually (to put it politely) kicked my ass. 

Needless to say, I started hanging out by the river before the rain had even stopped. The improved weather just meant that sometimes other people would show up. Namely-

“Hey… do you mind if I sit with you?”

Speak of the fucking devil.

I turned to face Ernst, who was standing very awkwardly by a tree. I let my little levitating ball of water fall back into the river. “I guess I can’t stop you.”

Ernst sighed, sitting cross legged a few feet away from me. “So what are you mad at me for now?”

I winced. When he phrased it like that, I kind of sounded like a dick. Then again, I still stood my ground so maybe he was onto something. “You knew about the bolt, didn’t you?”

“Yes…” Ernst answered honestly. It sounded genuine, but seeing as he had literal mind control powers I knew I couldn’t fully trust it.

“When did you find out?” I asked, pulling another ball of water from the river and absentmindedly watched a small fish swim little laps inside of it.

Ernst hesitated, picking at the grass next to him. “Since last December… Chiron didn’t want anyone to panic. But with the gods talking about another child of the big three, he-”

“He sent people out to find them.” I finished for him. “And you got sent to Yancy.”

“... Yeah.” Ernst said quietly. “You know that’s not the only reason I-”

“Did you know it was me?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to know the answer. 

“Yes? No? Not at first, at least.” He tossed a pebble into the water. “I figured out after you pulled those boys into the fountain. But I still didn’t know for sure until… well, you know. The whole claiming thing.”

I nodded. I was right. I didn’t want to know the answer. “So that’s why you started hanging out with me.”

“It’s why I started hanging out with you,” Ernst agreed, playfully elbowing me and making me lose my focus and drop my little fish-ball-thing. “But it’s not why I kept hanging out with you. We’re friends, dummy. No backing out.”

I let myself smile at that, even if it was just for a bit. But then I remembered what the oracle had said.

“You shall be betrayed by one who calls you friend.”

I looked at Ernst, who was smiling at me with his sympathetic smile. Something about it made me know that there was still something he wasn’t telling me. Still, I smiled back.

I was just going to have to hope and pray to whatever god had the time to listen that the prophecy wasn’t supposed to be about him.

Or maybe it was just another reason to not take the risk.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uh.... yeah its not good you know the drill. But it's about to get exciting I promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: We have a brief discussion of grief and suicidal intrusive thoughts at the very end. It's short but its not pleasant.

I had only been at camp for a week when the hellhound attack came.

It must have happened pretty early in the morning, since most of the camp was still asleep. Apparently Melchior thought he heard someone calling out of help from the forest and went to go see what was happening. By the time he got there, the Hellhound had already broken it’s way through the barrier. He managed to get away with only a few scratches and a bite on his arm, but the huge 1,000 pound black demon dog had found its way to camp. It took the combined effort of ten older campers as well as Mr. D. to fight it off, a process that had left several injured but luckily didn’t end with anyone’s death.

I feel like I don’t even need to say who people were blaming for this.

With tensions so high, I was shocked that Georg had even let me into the infirmary at all. Granted, there were some… precautions taken on his part.

“Dude, was that really necessary?” I complained, taking the paper bag off of my head and chucking it into the garbage can.

Georg put his hands up defensively. “I don’t know what you want me to do, man. People aren’t really happy to see you right now, and I can’t have you stressing out my patients.”

I rolled my eyes and looked at Melchior, who looked like he was enjoying this exchange a bit too much. That or it was just the pain meds he was probably on.

Georg left, leaving us alone.

“... So it’s my fault isn’t it?” I asked. Melchior usually had some kind of answer, and beating around the bush doesn’t really get me anywhere.

“Do you want the nice answer or the honest answer?” Melchior winced, moving to sit up. His arm was wrapped in bandages and settled in a sling. 

I thought about it for a bit. “Let’s start with the nice answer.”

He sighed, which made me wonder if the nice answer was actually nice or if it was just Melchior’s version of nice. That is what most people would call mean with extra steps. “It’s not all on you. The god’s love to bring us into their petty drama. This would have happened regardless of if you were here or not.”

If that was his nice answer, I didn’t want the honest answer. Melchior must have realized this, because he didn’t tell.

“Have you ever been on one?” I asked, eyeing his bandages. “A quest, I mean.”

He hesitated, and I wondered if that was a question that I wasn’t supposed to ask. That’s when he moved his arm with another wince, using the one that was uninjured to lift up the bottom of his shirt. There, running from the bottom of his abdomen to some part of his torso that I couldn’t see under the rest of his shirt was a white, raised scar. He pulled his shirt back down, his eyes looking steely. It was the kind of look that didn’t fit his face well. It made him look years older than he really was.

“I went on one a few years ago. It… Didn’t go well. A monster caught up to us and I took a pretty bad hit.” He began, his face softening a bit. “I only made it back to camp alive because Otto had enough nectar to keep me breathing while they were dragging me back.”

I felt a chill go down my spine. I remembered the lightning strike, and how the nectar and ambrosia had made the severe burns disappear without a trace. If Melchior still had a scar to show for it afterwards, I didn’t want to know how deep the cut had been before.

Melchior sighed again. “If we’re right about what the prophecy means, then you’d be heading towards the underworld. That’s where you’d find Hades. But… that’s also where the dead go too.”

He looked at me like I was supposed to understand something. I gave him a look back that showed I definitely hadn’t. 

Then, it clicked. If Greta was anywhere, that’s where she’d be. I almost jumped out of my seat when I realized he was saying.

“You can make a deal to get the bolt and your sister back. Just make an offer he can’t refuse.” He explained, looking like he was in pain as he did so.

“What could I possibly offer to a fucking god?” I asked, knowing that the gum in my pocket and my life savings probably wouldn’t do much.

Melchior looked back up at me. “I happen to know someone.”

It took me too long to connect the dots. Martha is the daughter of Hades. And as far as we know, she’s his only child. “You’re kidding…”

“Betrayed by one who calls you friend.” Melchior said flatly. “Prophecies are hard to read sometimes. Just because it was given to you doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be about you. The fates don’t care as long as it comes true in some twisted way.”

“So I turn it on Martha…” I said it more to myself. 

“She can take it.” Melchior assured me. “You don’t need to actually do anything to hurt her. You just have to convince Hades that you could.”

I didn’t respond for a while. The two of us just sat there, thinking. I had no idea what was going on in Melchior’s head, or why he looked like he had been punched in the gut. But I knew that, despite how underhanded it was, it was worth it if it meant Greta could come back. I nodded, telling him that I understood.

“I’ll do it.”

Martha was at the edge of the forest, walking slowly along the perimeter of the camp. She stopped occasionally to either write something down in her notebook or twist around her beaded camp necklace (yet another thing that no one had explained to me).

It was genuinely ridiculous how much I had to hype myself up to go and talk to her. But in all fairness, her dad was literally the god of… hell I guess? I actually wasn’t sure. I didn’t pay attention in Brunn- Chiron’s class. Regardless, I was sure that pissing her off any more than I was about to wasn’t a good idea.

I stepped out into the clearing, bottle of now lukewarm Pepsi in hand. She was so engrossed in whatever she was writing down that she didn’t even notice me at first. I cleared my throat.

She jumped, almost dropping her notebook. When she saw it was just me, she looked relieved as well as underwhelmed (I did have that effect). I waved.

“What do you want?” She asked in a way that I don’t think was meant to be rude. Just very to-the-point. She wanted it to be known that she simply didn’t have time for me.

Wow. That was actually a good question. Why had I come here again? Oh, right. I held out the bottle of Pepsi, who if my informant (Melchior on pain meds) was correct, was her favorite soda. She didn’t take it, just looked between me and the bottle.

“What’s this?” She asked, pushing her notebook back into her bag.

“It’s like an olive branch.” I said, giving the bottle a very careful shake as to not make it explode or something. But she still didn’t take it.

“Moritz, I know you aren’t always the smartest so I’ll tell you this in the simplest way that I can. That’s not actually an olive branch. That’s a soda.” She said it in a monotone voice as if she was actually being helpful.

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I know that. I meant like a truce.” I sighed. “Do you want it or not?”

She hesitated before taking it from my hand. “Why?”

“Why what?” I very quickly put my hands back to my side before I forgot they were there and did something stupid with them.

“Why are you extending the olive branch?” She asked, putting the bottle into her bag as well. So she did know the expression. She just wanted to be mean.

“Well… I mean this fighting is kind of stupid right? Like, it’s not getting us anywhere and I-”

She cut me off. “And you need my help.” She finished the sentence without any doubts. She knew exactly where I was going with this.

I sighed, figuring that there was no way I could come up with a convincing lie. I had to just tell her why I was here without letting her know too much. “They want me to go down to the underworld and I-” I thought about what I was going to say next. “I can’t do this without you.”

She looked at me like she didn’t know what to say. It was the first and probably last time I would ever see her speechless. I sighed. “You’re right. This is stupid. I can’t just-”

“I’ll do it.” She said quickly before I could turn around and leave. “I mean… If it’s for the greater good then I’m sure we can put aside our differences and… yeah. I’ll go.”

I smiled. Like actually smiled. I lifted my arms up, suggesting that we maybe hug it out or something. However, Martha grimaced. She didn’t seem to be a fan of the idea. Instead she took a step back and held out her hand for a handshake.

Well, I guess this was still progress. I shook her hand, feeling a pang of guilt. I shook it off when she noticed my smile wavering. Melchior was right, Martha could hold her own. I just had to be careful where I stepped in this landmine of a plan.

I thought it would take some convincing to get Ernst on board to come with. Like, any at all. But when I knocked on the door of the Aphrodite cabin, he answered by tossing an already packed bag into my hands.

“It has everything you’ll need. Ambrosia, nectar, a toothbrush, and an extra pack of clothes.” He said immediately, tossing his own bag over his shoulder.

“What about money?” I asked, a bit disoriented. I had to talk Ernst into going to the cafeteria for lunch at Yancy, but a road trip to hell was nothing? I didn’t think there was any way I would ever understand him.

“I’m not letting you carry the money.” Ernst said simply. “You’ll lose it.”

I wasn’t going to argue that. It was a fair point. “Wait, I haven’t even asked you to come with yet.”

“Oh,” Ernst paused like he had forgotten about that crucial step. He turned to me. “Can I come with?”

“I mean I guess-” I started, adjusting the bag on my shoulder.

“Alright, good. I’ll go let Chiron know.” He said, pushing past me and taking his bag with him. I looked back into the cabin and saw one of his older sisters standing near the doorway. My assumption was that she was about to open the door when she was suddenly pushed to the side by a 12-year-old- ball of unfounded energy.

But instead of looking annoyed or even confused, she just looked apprehensive. She looked at me like I had said something offensive before looking back to where Ernst had run off. As she closed the door, I saw her make the hand motion that Ernst had once made. He had said that it was a sign to ward off evil.

I took that as my cue to leave.

As far as quests go, this one seemed kind of boring. Chiron called me into the Big House a few hours later and helped me book three bus tickets to LA. I told him who I was bringing with me, and he wrote their names down. Mr. D. reluctantly agreed to drive us to the bus stop the next morning. The only thing that threw me off was when Chiron started asking about if I had any funeral arrangements I wanted to set up in case I didn’t come back. I jokingly told him to just throw me into a garbage bag and toss me into the lake… or at least I intended for it to be a joke. But then he actually wrote it down, and I didn’t really want to correct him or give him a serious answer.

I went back to my cabin and grabbed a few things that I wanted to take with me. I looked over at the chapstick sitting next to the air mattress I slept on. I picked it up and uncapped it, watching it turn into a sickle and feeling the weight change in my hand.

My eyes started watering, and I capped it again. I shoved it into one of the smaller pockets on my backpack, knowing that Greta would want it back.

I went to bed that night, but I didn’t sleep. I had no idea what the morning would bring, but I knew that whatever it was it couldn’t be as easy as it seemed. After all, I had a garbage bag and a portion of the lake with my name on it as proof of how horribly wrong things could go. I also thought about Melchior and the long scar that even the food of the gods couldn’t heal. 

Yes, I do know that holding a dangerous weapon while you sleep is generally a bad idea. Even if the weapon is in chapstick form. But my logic at the time was solid.

When I was younger, I would get nightmares every night. I never knew what was so scary about them, but for some reason they would leave me terrified. I would try to fight through them, but it never worked. It wasn’t until I met Greta that I learned how much being held helped. From then on, if I couldn’t sleep I knew where to go. Even at Yancy, I knew I could call her. Her voice helped.

The chapstick was the closest I could get now. So I took it with whatever dignity I had left. I hugged that chapstick for longer than I will admit, pushing back the darker thought of what would happen if the lid came off and if there was anyone who would care anymore if it did. Would I even care if it did? Would I be glad if it did?

I stopped there, forcing myself to move the capped end away from my chest. I don’t need to think about that.

She’ll be back soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The gang is all together kids


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> FUCKING HELL  
> Ok so Ernst caused me grief in this chapter and I'm sure it shows.

The next morning came far too early for my liking. Mr. D. came pounding on my door at 8 in the morning, which is just an ungodly hour during the summer. It was one of those moments where I was glad that I didn’t believe in pajamas.

I threw on some jeans and tucked Greta’s part-time Chapstick, full-time sharp weapon back into its own little backpack pocket. I ran out to the dining pavilion and shoved a few apples and granola bars in any empty space I could find in the main pocket before heading towards the flock of people standing at the top of the hill.

“You’re late.” Martha said when she saw me run up the hill. She had a bag big enough to make mine look like a Barbie purse and her Yankee’s cap hanging from one of her belt loops. She almost looked like a normal camper if you ignored the two foot long black sword that she had hanging on a scabbard that she wore around her waist. I was just wondering how she was going to walk around with it without tripping on it.

I took a look around. “Where’s Ernst?”

She bit the inside of her cheek and looked away. “Just give him a moment.”

Ok, so Ernst can be late and it’s fine. God, this was going to be a long bus ride. I turned around, walking deeper into the crowd to see if I could find Ernst. The sooner we left, the sooner we could get this over with.

Most people looked away when I passed by, some seemed angry but others looked like they were afraid. I still wasn’t sure why, pretty much everyone had seen me training. I couldn’t hurt anyone even if I wanted to. There was a nine-year-old from the Athena cabin who beat me during sword fighting practice.

I felt someone grab my hand and I thought for sure that someone had decided to actually put my lack of fighting skills to the test. I flinched until I saw Anna smiling at me.

“Good luck!” She said, giving my hand a pat. I relaxed a bit, squeezing her hand back.

“Have you ever been on one?” I asked breathlessly.

Anna hesitated. “Yeah, I went on one…”

“How was it?” I had a feeling I didn’t want an honest answer.

Luckily, Anna didn’t give me one. “It was… fine.” She looked guilty, which did not make me feel better.

I sighed. “Have you seen Ernst?”

She shook her head. “No, sorry… Is he not here yet?”

“No.” I said, sounding more annoyed than I wanted to. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to- OK, well I did mean to be rude, just not to you-”

“Try the Big House.” She said, pointing to the porch and sounding like she had said something she wasn’t supposed to.

I looked over to the Big House, nodding. “Thanks.” I gave her hand a squeeze before letting go and running up the stairs.

“Ernst!” I called, kicking off my shoes at the front door (the floor was carpet and Mr. D. had already threatened to turn me into a dolphin once for tracking in dirt).

I didn’t get an answer, so I ventured deeper. “Ernst, we’ve got to go!”

When I found Ernst, He was standing in the hallway, staring at a wall of plaques. I looked over, reading a few of them.

Stanly Anderson, Son of Ares, 1993-2007. Sally Timmerman, Daughter of Demeter, 1990-2008. Anne Kim, Daughter of Iris, 1991-2007. It took me too long to realize that the wall was a memorial to past campers. I stepped back, like one of the dead campers would reach out from their plaque and grab me if I got too close.

This got Ernst’s attention, making him jump back and pull his hand off of the plaque he had been touching.

“Hey, we have to-” I was about to yell at him when I saw the tears in the corners of his eyes. He must have realized he was crying and wiped them away. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He sniffled, which did not help him prove his point. I went to put my hand on his shoulder, but he moved away. “We should probably get going… buses, you know?”

I nodded as he walked away, not sparing another look at the wall. I glanced over to the plaque he had been touching, reading it as he left without a second thought.

Lawrence Robel, Unclaimed, 1984-2004.

I wanted to ask him about it, but something told me that now wasn’t the time. I joined him outside, standing on the porch and watching the crowd disperse and go to their regular camp activities. Ernst was tapping his fingers in a nervous rhythm against the railing. I grabbed his other hand, holding it loose enough that if he wanted to he could pull it away. But he didn’t, instead he held it tighter. 

We walked over to Martha, who looked annoyed at first but actually softened when she saw Ernst’s red-rimmed eyes and our hands intertwined. He smiled and let go, climbing into the camp van.

Martha went to climb in after him, but paused before turning around and looking at me.

“Thanks.” She said quietly but sincerely. I nodded, grabbing my bag and going to throw it into the back of the van.

Chiron was standing by the back doors, like he was waiting. His back straightened when he saw me.

“Moritz,” He greeted stiffly. “I hope you slept well.”

“Yes sir.” I muttered, wondering if it would be rude to open the door while he was still talking. This led to me awkwardly standing there with my hand on the door handle.

He cleared this throat. “Mortiz, before you go there’s something I’d like to give you.” 

He reached into the pocket and pulled something out, stepping to the side and looking at me like I was supposed to follow him. I nodded, putting my bag down in the dirt and walking over to him. That’s when he handed me…

A pen.

That’s right, a blue ballpoint pen.

“Oh… thanks.” I said politely. “I lost mine.”

Chiron laughed, and I will proudly admit that I did not know why. That's when I remembered the museum, Mrs. Dodds, and what he had thrown at me that day. I looked back down at the capped pen, a dreadful feeling pooling in my stomach. I was pretty sure this pen wasn’t what it seemed.

Chiron was looking at me expectantly, as if I was supposed to know what to do next. I tapped it into the palm of my hand a few times before hesitantly pressing my thumb to the cap. I looked as Chiron for any kind of approval before uncapping the pen and feeling how it changed under my fingers. The pen quickly turned itself into a bronze sword, a few feet long and perfectly balanced in my hand. It seemed to emit its own light rather than catching the light of the sun like most swords would have. The writing on the handle was in greek, a language that I couldn’t read. But in a blink of an eye, the letters shifted and formed into something familiar.

They spelled out Riptide.

Chiron cleared his throat, pulling me out of my moment of child-like wonder (appropriate description, seeing as I was actually a child. “It is a gift,” He said simply. “From your father.”

I grimaced and looked back down at the sword. In my eyes it looked dull now. I pressed the cap to the tip of the sword, watching it shrink back into a pen before chucking it into the nearby bushes. I looked back at Chiron, hoping my discontent was obvious. 

He didn’t look shocked. Of course he didn’t, he was Chiron for God’s (gods’?) sake. Instead he looked sad, as if he had seen this a million times before. “Check your pocket, Moritz.”

I begrudgingly stuck my hand into my pocket, knowing where this was probably going to go. Sure enough, I pulled out that same blue ballpoint pen. “There’s no getting away from this, is there?”

“It’s a gift from a god.” He sounded sympathetic, but I couldn’t tell if it was genuine or mocking. “Those never come without a price.”

I huffed and pushed the pen back into my pocket. “That kind of negates the entire point of a gift.”

I went to leave. I had a quest to do, after all. Friend’s to betray, world saving missions to fail, the works. Of course, Chiron couldn’t let me off that easy. He put his hand on my shoulder the exact way that I hate. It’s the type of touch that was never sincere, always either out of pity or just a need to have their hand a little closer to my throat. I flinched.

“You don’t have to let your father define you.” He said, his grip tightening on my shoulder. 

I thought about all the whispers around camp, the way other campers looked at me when I passed by. All anyone except for Melchior and Ernst knew about me was who my father was, and they were afraid. Afraid of me.

I pushed his hand off of my shoulder. “He already has.”

The van ride with Mr. D. was definitely something.

“Are you drunk?” Martha asked, bracing herself against the wall of the van. Ernst and I had not been so fortunate, both of us rolling around in the back of the van in an awkward tangle of arms and legs. Chiron had failed to mention to us that the Camp Half-Blood van didn’t have any actual seats aside from the two in the front. Since Mr. D. was taking up one and a cooler full of diet Cokes was taking up the other, that didn’t leave the three of us with too many options.

Mr. D. actually laughed instead of smiting her. “Someone’s in a mood today! Save the energy for the monsters, sweetheart.”

Martha looked like she wanted to vomit at the nickname… that or the motion sickness was finally setting in.

We made it to the bus terminal mostly in one piece. It was a gas station connected to a McDonalds with a teenage boy selling tickets behind a counter and looking bored. The McDonalds smell was making my stomach make some truly inhuman noises, and with help from Ernst we were able to chip in enough spare change in our pockets to get a large fry. Martha wouldn’t let us use any of the quest money to buy them because she said that it was for “real food”. We tried to offer her one, but she gagged and called us cretins. I got the feeling she didn’t like McDonalds.

I had thought that Martha’s sword was going to give us way more trouble than it did. I definitely didn’t think that this guy was going to let her take it with, but he didn’t seem too phased by it.

“You play?” He asked Martha, pointing to the sword. She looked as calm as ever, nodding as she passed him her printed out ticket.

He took the ticket, examining it while he made small talk. “I used to play in high school. What position are you?”

“Just a bench warmer, really.” Her answer seemed normal, but there was that bit of uncertainty that you could only catch if you had heard her talk before. “Not that good.”

The ticket guy made an “Ah” noise. “Yeah, same here.” He slid her ticket back to her. “You’re good.”

“What was that?” I whispered to her as we walked away. 

Martha shrugged. “The mist. It’s the force that keeps mortals from seeing what they don’t understand.”

She must have seen the look of pure “what the hell does that mean?” on my face, because she sighed and sat down on the bench outside of the gas station. She looked at me like I was supposed to join her.

“Mortals can’t see the things they choose not to believe. So the mist distorts what’s real to make it better fit their version of reality.” She explained. “Once you know the truth, the mist stops working. That’s why the weird things you used to see as a kid seemed like they made sense.”

I nodded, starting to understand. “So the cashier didn’t see a sword.” I thought outloud. “He saw some kind of sports equipment-thingy.”

Martha nodded as well with a dignity that my last sentence didn’t deserve. “Yes, a sports equipment… thingy.”

We sat in awkward silence before Ernst came out to join us. Silence was just a little bit more bearable when he was there to sit in between Martha and I.

Over the next thirty minutes, other passengers began to arrive. Mainly college students who had finally been freed from their dorms and older couples who looked just about one tube top and/or swear word from throttling them with their canes. The older folks didn’t take well to our presence either, especially with our very notable lack of adult supervision.

The bus got there fifteen minutes late, a fact that I only knew because of Ernst’s impatient ass asking Martha how late it was every single minute after 10:30.

“So how long is this ride again?” I asked, tossing my backpack on the luggage rack above our seats.

Martha frowned, taking it back down and handing it to me. “Forty-three hours, give or take a bit for stops and such.”

I furrowed my eyebrows, tossing my bag back up onto the rack. “Great. Thanks.”

Martha didn’t look too pleased, reaching up for my bag again. “You should keep this with you, you never know what might happen.”

“I don’t have anywhere to put it.” I pointed out, not appreciating the advice.

“Put it under your seat.” She pushed it over to me.

“It won’t fit.”

“Then put it under your feet.”

“Unlike you, I actually need the leg room. Not everyone can be as close to the ground as you are.”

“I would really like you to keep the bag with you.”

“And I would really like to keep it up here.”

Ernst, who had been quiet up until then, groaned loudly. Martha and I stopped arguing and looked. “I’m not dealing with this for two days, if you guys keep it up I will personally find a way for one of you to ride in the latrine.”

Martha looked at me with her usual nonchalance. “I think that would be you, oh Supreme Lord of the Bathroom.”

I wanted to say something back so badly, but Ernst was giving me a look that could kill so I elected to sit down and behave instead. He could be very persuasive when he wanted to be.

Despite her incessant harping about how we should “always be alert, blah blah blah, I’m a control freak”, Martha was passed out in the first few minutes. I had tried to sleep, but found it to be a very difficult task considering how tired I was. After all, an air mattress on the floor that kept deflating in the middle of the night was not the ideal way to get a good night’s sleep.

I had the feeling that I was being watched. Was it just the existential dread or a genuine sign of danger? Only time would tell, I suppose.

“Do you get the feeling we’re being watched?” I whispered to Ernst right after crossing the border into New Jersey. 

Ernst, who was on the verge of falling asleep on my shoulder, made a noise. “No, why?”

“I just have a bad feeling-” I whispered, but Ernst made another annoyed sound and elbowed me in the ribs (I think it was an accident, but it very well could have been intentional).

“Shut up and sleep or something.” Ernst muttered, moving his head off my shoulder. He awkwardly rested his head on top of Martha’s.

Something wasn’t right. I knew I was being watched, but now I could hear voices in sinister whispers coming from behind us. The language was one I didn’t know, but I picked out two words in english; “Master bolt”.

I turned my head a bit too quickly. I’m not sure what I expected to see, but three Mrs. Dodds isn’t something that would have made it on that list. Great, just what this road trip needed. Triplet demon math teachers

I shook Ernst’s shoulder, making him reach over and attempt to hit me. “Ernst! Ernst, get up!”

“What?” He whined, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. His movement woke up Martha, who didn’t look very happy about it.

“It’s Mrs. Dodds.” I said quietly. “But there are three of her? They’re sitting three rows down! I thought I killed her?”

“Mrs. D-” It’s like something finally connected in Ernst’s brain. He whipped his head around very obviously before turning back forward with his eyes wide as saucers. “Fuck.”

“Who’s Mrs. Dodds?” Martha asked, sounding annoyed that no one had filled her in yet.

“Fury.” Ernst answered, “Three of them.”

“Three?” She whispered, leaning over Ernst and I to get a better look. Clearly Camp Half-Blood didn’t have a class on subtlety. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know!” I answered, though looking back the question probably directed towards me. I turned back to look at them again, only to find that this time they were staring right back at me. One looked quite proud, and picked up her purse. She took out a clear mason jar with something bright and green contained in it.

“Guys…” I said, my voice weak. “What’s that?”

Martha and Ernst both followed my eyes and I saw the color drain from Ernst’s face. “Greek fire…”

“There’s no way they would… They aren’t going to…” Martha seemed at a loss for words, which made me understand just how dire our situation was.

“What’s Greek fire?” I asked, but I was sure I wouldn’t like the answer.

Martha swallowed nervously. “It’s a fire that can’t be put out. It can’t hurt mortals or demigods, but…”

“But?” I pressed on.

Ernst was the one who finished Martha’s thought. Though not directly. “They’re going to blow up the bus.”

He faced forward again, taking a huge sip of the soda he had bought from the vending machine. “Cover your ears.” He said.

Martha looked skeptical. “What are you going to do?” She asked.

Ernst sighed, taking another sip for good measure. “Something stupid.”

I covered my ear tightly, the next few seconds going by in slow motion. I watched the Fury pull the jar out of her purse and casually drop it into the aisle. Ernst took a deep breath and yelled “Fire!” just as the jar shattered onto the aisle.

I was suddenly filled with panic, my skin heating up as if I were burning already. The people around me began to scream and jump up from their seats as the bus skidded to a stop. I was ready to join them when I felt Ernst put his hand on my leg. I looked over to see him looking worn out, but mostly calm. He had done the same to Martha, who was clutching the seat and hyperventilating. The cloudy feeling in my head was fading and I realized what he had done.

“Oh, yeah…” I breathed. “Charmspeak. I forgot you can do that.”

There was a loud screech, and we all turned back just in time to see a pretty scarring sight. The Fury that had dropped the jar into the aisle had been knocked into the fire in all of the chaos. She burned quickly and turned into a fine golden power in the most traumatizing way possible. Her two sisters didn’t look too happy about it.

“We need to go,” Martha said, pulling Ernst up by the arm. “Now!”

One of the Furies lunged at us, Grabbing Martha by the arm and pulling her away. Ernst stumbled and I caught him, sitting him back down before taking out my pen. I wasn’t one for prayers, but at that moment I could really have gone for a bit of divine intervention.

Martha’s sword was just out of reach, stuck between her back and the Fury’s ugly puke green sweater. I started to panic, not sure what to do. The Fury was looking at me with this sick grin as she tightened her grip around Martha, now with one arm around her neck.

I backed up, sticking my hand into my pocket to find Riptide. As much as I didn’t want to use it, I knew that Greta’s sickle wouldn’t be able to pack the force needed. 

“Get ready to duck!” I yelled to Martha. The Fury saw my pen and laughed. I’m not a fan of being laughed at on a good day, but I like it less when the person laughing at me has my friend in a chokehold.

I uncapped Riptide and swung with everything I had. Martha ducked her head into the Fury’s armpit (gross) as the blade hit the monster in the neck. She fell to the ground as the Fury disintegrated into another shower of golden dust. It would have looked quite pretty if it wasn’t for the fact that the dust was made up of the remains of my scary dead math teacher.

Ernst tried to stand up, but fell back down again. He looked pale and tired, like he was on the verge of death. “What’s wrong with him?” I asked Martha.

“Charmspeak.” She answered, brushing the dust off of her shoulder. “It takes a lot out of him on a good day… It takes literally everything out of him when he has to do it to an entire bus load of people.”

I nodded, grabbing one of his arms and slinging it over my shoulder. “Let’s-”

I was going to say “Let’s get out of here” when the third, previously unaccounted for Mrs. Dodds descended from the ceiling with a force that sent the bus rolling onto its side. Showing us in true math teacher fashion how bad we are at basic arithmetic in the most brutal way possible.

Ernst and I went flying towards a window with a painful thud, while Martha managed to steady herself on the back of one of the seats. The fire in the aisle was spreading with no mercy, and the Fury was standing in the way of our only exit.

“So the fire can’t hurt mortals, right?” I asked Martha as she helped me up.

She hesitated. “Yeah…”

“And do we count?” I pushed further. “You know, as mortals?”

Martha bit her lip. “Not particularly, no.”

“Oh…” I said, pulling Ernst up by the arm. “Great.”

Ernst had gained enough strength to stand up almost on his own. He pulled his arm away from me and grabbed onto the seat Martha was holding. “Bus… Fire… Can’t stay.”

“So what do we plan to do about that?” Martha crossed her arms. She and Ernst had one of those staring contests that usually meant something to them but nothing to anyone else. “... That could work.”

“What?” I asked. I was getting really tired of third-wheeling their telepathic conversations..

“Hurry, I’m gonna… I can’t-” Ernst then lost his temporary ability to stand, falling against my chest and hitting my nose with his head.

I pushed his head away a bit without pushing him to the ground. “Ok, would anyone like to share with the class?”

The Fury seemed to be getting bored of watching us talk. She bared her teeth and began to shift into a more monstrous form, her teeth growing sharper and her brown loafers turning into black, taloned claws. She ran one against the metal floor of the bus, tearing up the floor and creating an awful, ear-splitting grating sound.

Martha jumped over the back of the seat and took Ernst off my chest. “Take my hand!” She all but demanded, reaching out to me.

Now, I’m not the smartest. But I think it was reasonable that I didn’t quite see how this would help. “You aren’t going to buy me dinner first?”

“Shut up and take it!” She then took my hand instead of waiting for me to do it.

I was going to say something snappy, but then out of nowhere Martha flung herself into the side of the bus. I closed my eyes, waiting to hit the cold metal at full force. But instead of feeling my face get bashed in by a panel of steel, I felt a cold wind hit and pressure on all sides of my body. It was like what I could imagine being sucked into a vacuum would feel like.

The feeling only lasted a few seconds, but it seemed like a lifetime. When I opened my eyes again, we were standing in a clearing in a forest. I felt lightheaded, Ernst somehow looked worse than before, but Martha was completely fine.

I must have been staring at her, since she decided to answer the question I hadn't even asked yet. “Shadowtravel.”

“Ah…” Great, another horrifying magic demigod power that I didn’t understand. “Well… this is off to a great start.”

That’s when Ernst rolled on his side and vomited. 

Yeah, this quest was going great.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If he keeps this up I'm killing him off /j


End file.
